GRGR1-Bananas

[David Casseres]

[Basileios Drolias sez]
>i hate to repeat things that were mentioned in the list ages ago by 
>somebody else but since nobody else mentioned it i might as well: 
>allegedly there was the rumour in the sixties of bananas causing 
>hallucinations (you take the peel dry it and then smoke it orsomething 
>bizzare like that). (hence possibly the banana cover of the velvet 
>underground at about teh same time as GR? -hey in the first page even 
>the word velevet appears for some people that are going underground... 
>nah maybe not...). 

There was indeed such a rumor, and many believed it enough to create 
enormous messes and stinks trying to process banana peels into dope.  But 
I don't think the Velvet Underground cover connects with that, or with 
Gravity's Rainbow.  First, I'm pretty sure the dates of the three things 
are actually pretty widely scattered -- first the banana-peel thing, then 
the Velvet Underground album, then Gravity's Rainbow -- and second, the 
drug associated with the Velvet Underground was pretty exclusively heroin.

But a banana is so full of associations, so rich in meaning, that we'd be 
unwise to discount any theory, no matter how apparently tenuous, about 
still more linkages.  (Sa-ay, what *is* that thing being shoved down 
Slothrop's throat in the cartoon panel that we glimpse briefly in the 
middle of some other shit, no explanation given, just the purely visual 
fragment, like a piece of a Japanese manga print showing up as wrapping 
paper in a package arriving in Victorian England from abroad...?)

Cheers,
David