Japan Playboy

[pynchonoid]

We could speculate that Elvis emerged from a UFO in
the Bermuda Triangle and arranged for Thomas Pynchon
to be interviewed in Playboy Japan, too, and we can
speculate that the moon might be made of green cheese,
and that George Bush really is going to eliminate Evil
and create democracy.  Once you let go of the need for
evidence or a tether to reality, the way Malign does
for example, you can imagine just about anything about
anything. 

Malign's comments on the content of the Playboy Japan
article are equally worthless.  Nobody has seen the
original transcript, if one exists, of Pynchon's
remarks in English.  As we've discussed here many
times before, whatever he said was translated from
English (I assume) into Japanese, in which the article
was edited and published. From Japanese, it has been
translated back into English.  

All Malign has ever been able to do is to exaggerate
some of the translation artifacts in a crude
caricature that is as racist as it is unfunny, and put
these words in Pynchon's mouth. Har-de-har-har. I
wonder why we don't have more Japanese participants in
the discussion here.

Lost in the discussion is the article's reception in
Japan, what Japanese readers of Pynchon might have to
say about it, the larger issues of Pynchon's
relationship with Japanese culture and how he has
represented it in his books.  Then the non-literary
aspects - how were Pynchon's remarks received in that
immediate post-9/11 period, etc. Maybe Pynchon Notes
will offer more articles in this area, I hope so.

That book that Dave was reading and writing about here
sounded like a good place to start on some of these
topics.



http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"

http://OnlineJournalist.org

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com