Pynchon's interview in Playboy Japan

[Malignd]

Scoop:

<<With regard to the content of the Playboy Japan
interview, I don't understand why you and other
critics continue to critique it without examining the
text itself, or, if you can't read it in the original
Japanese, without collaborating with a Japanese
speaker who can help you understand it, or, at the
very least, work with a competent literary translation
of the interview. You can hardly do it justice
otherwise.>>

One understands you would like a way around the
numbing banality of the interview, but this is wholly
illogical.  Whether the English version of the
“interview” was Pynchon’s words, a paraphrase of
Pynchon’s words, or a retranslation back out of the
Japanese of Pynchon’s words is, I think, unclear.  But
one can be sure (unless it is known Pynchon speaks
Japanese) that the one in Japanese is certainly NOT
Pynchon’s own words.

<<The interview is not "apocryphal". It's been
published and distributed by Playboy Japan, whose
editors have defended its authenticity. Pynchon Notes
editors have accepted the Playboy Japan interview as a
valid bibliography item.  Pynchon -- not known to
refrain from involving a lawyer when necessary -- has
apparently made no effort to disclaim it's
authenticity.>>

Further, by this logic one is compelled to accept the
English version, with all its wooly haplessness, as
fair and representative, since Pynchon has done
nothing to indicate otherwise or distance himself from
it.



	
		
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