re P's interviews

[pynchonoid]

Of course jbor can continue to define "interview" any
old way at all, but the fact is, journalists
frequently refer to  email interviews as the source of
comments or information that appear in their articles
(the same way that a newspaper article will refer to
an interview conducted over the phone, or in person at
a particular location -- you see this sort of thing in
newspapers every day).  Hadju's interview with Pynchon
has been accepted as such by just about everybody who
has written about it, in the press and here on
Pynchon-L, except for jbor, of course. 

jbor:
[...] no-one thinks 
of it as an *interview*, [...]

This is inaccurate.  It's common practice now for
journalists (and job-seekers, researchers in academic,
government, and business organizations, etc.) to
conduct interviews by email. You can say it isn't, or
course, but that doesn't change the fact that this is
a common practice.

jbor:
[...] Considering that there would have been an 
expectation
from Pynchon's publishers, particularly early on in
his career, for him 
to
give interviews [...]

I doubt that you have any specific information about
Pynchon's publishers with regard to their expectations
for his participation in book marketing activities
"early in his career" -- if you do have anything
beyond a guess, perhaps you could share it with
Pynchon-l.  

Book publishing was a very different business in the
late 1950s and early 1960s.  The marketing and
merchandising apparatus that now works to turn authors
into commodities -- with author tours, co-branding,
cross-merchandising, cable TV, Web sites, etc. --
existed only in embryo, coming into its own only in
the 1980s, as book publishing, print journalism,
broadcasting, and digital media began to converge.

Pynchon may have been a bit unusual in his preference
for privacy, compared to big bestseller authors of the
late 50s and early 60s when he started publishing his
work, but he was not nearly as out of the mainstream
(with regard to his participation in book marketing
activities) then as he was considered when Vineland
appeared. His increasing contacts with the press since
the publication of M&D, and now this appearance on the
Simpsons, amount to a giant step into the public
sphere, albeit on his own terms.

We have always had artists who have chosen not to
accept this or that award, for a variety of reasons;
in this respect, Pynchon is not unusual at all;
instead he is a member of a select group that chooses
to go against the tide.

jbor:
 [...] I've never called him a
recluse, by the way [..]

Again the semantic hair-splitting! That's the way you
describe him as you continue to shade your
characterization of Pynchon to fit the "reclusive
author" myth that Pynchon rejects and ridicules.

Pynchon is certainly not the sort of brand-name author
that Janet Maslin discusses in her article in today's
NY Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/books/30NOTE.html>,
but to say that he is a "recluse", or a "reclusive
author", or to describe him as such is not accurate,
either.






__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/