IVIV Why 'chocolate-covered bananas? p.22

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Mark:
 
> Bananas are a fine fun fruit might be our author's general authorial 
> intent, a happy food from the warm climes so positive in most of his 
> fiction. Pirate's banana breakfast in GR, amidst the worst with even 
> more than the worst on the way, is unforgettable.
 
And not just a fine fun fruit, but also a mindless, countercultural 
emblem in Pynchon's novels, eaten by Springer's crashout party (GR, 506),
u.s.w. Pynchon's take on bananas is more complex in IV (and what an 
absurd sentence that is!): On the one hand, he provides some of the 
lore which may have motivated his appropriation of the banana as a 
countercultural symbol in the first place, but at the same time he 
punctures the myth of the psychedelic bananas (both on p. 140) - kind 
of like when Gustav screws a light bulb into a kazoo in GR:
 
""You fools think the kazoo is a subversive instrument? Here--" he
always packs a light bulb on his daily rounds, no use passing up
an opportunity to depress the odd dopefiend...deftly screwing the
light bulb flush against the reed, muting it out, "You see? Phoebus
is even behind the _kazoo_. Ha! ha! ha!" Schadenfreude, worse than 
a prolonged onion fart, seeps through the room." (GR, 745)
 
Bigfoot's preference for chocolate-covered frozen bananas underscores
his ambiguous nature. Bad guys traditionally don't eat bananas in 
Pynchon's fiction (even though they may slip on the peels and fall 
on their ass), so when Bigfoot eats bananas, he can't be all bad, right?
On the other hand, the bananas are frozen, which as Doug reminds us
is a no-no, plus which they are covered in chocolate, which can a) 
contribute to their yumminess, and b) be seen as another instance 
of the paving over of the beach:

"Under the chocolate, the bananas!"
 
--Graffito, p-list, September 2009
_________________________________________________________________
Share your memories online with anyone you want.
http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/products/photos-share.aspx?tab=1