MDDM Ch. 8 MDDM Mangoes

[jbor]

lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> Rev.d  who holds up the Mango fruit as a Host and eats
> its flesh.

That Wicks refers to the mango as if it were a "Host" is more of a blasphemy
than anything else, surely? Mason regards it as an impiety -- Wicks's lewd
comment about Adam and Eve after the Fall is what spurs Mason's initial
impulse to "kill him now", though obviously Chas isn't much of a morning
person -- and perhaps explains why he doesn't like Wicks so much.

I'm not sure that Pynchon gets the mango scene quite right. Unripened
mangoes are commonly used in s-east Asian recipes. A few years back we had a
mango tree in our front yard. One of the Malaysian or Singaporean ladies who
worked in the kitchen at the restaurant I was working at asked if she could
come and pick some of the hard green mangoes -- I think it was in Autumn,
maybe early Winter. She took dozens of the green fruit and made jars and
jars of a savoury salad type dish, shredding the mango flesh and soaking it
in vinegar and sugar I think, which was quite delicious. I'd say the Malays
and others at the Cape would have used green mangoes in much the same
manner. It would be essential that the mangoes could be used as a staple
food throughout the year to avoid the fruit coming in a sudden glut and
mostly going to waste when it finally ripened. Elsewhere where I was living
there was just so much that the ripe fruits simply fell to the ground and
rotted, which was a terrible waste. Certainly a wonderful aroma, however.

best