Pynchon Japan Playboy

[Tim Strzechowski]

And, for whatever it's worth, my translation of the Playboy articles reads
thus:

"The United States has always had a tendency to look for an enemy.  It is a
country that cannot stand not having one.  Even for this terrorist incident,
it is already determined that the villain behind all of this is bin Laden,
but in reality they are saying that because they cannot stand not doing so.
I believe that bin Laden is someone's clown for a rodeo."



> Actually, that "rodeo clown" bit strengthens for me
> the case that these might well indeed be Pynchon's
> (perhaps off the cuff, maybe even presumed to be off
> the record) comments, beacuse it seems so unusual.
> Either something wasn't quite translated into and/or
> out of Japanese quite accurately, or I gotta wonder,
> what's Japanese for rodeo clown?  Lost in trans. ...
>


> > "America always looks for an enemy. The country
> > cannot feel O.K. without it. It has labeled Bin
> > Laden as the bad guy who commanded the terrorist
> > attacks from behind the scenes, only because we
> > couldn't feel O.K. unless we made him. But I think
> > Bin Laden is just somebody's rodeo clown."
>