IVIV Why 'chocolate-covered bananas? p.22

[János Székely]

1. Re the banana cult: if it's not under spoiler embargo now, I'd like
to join Tore's obs with my suspicion that IV here (on 140), with its
special reference to "banana molecules" (cf. banana DNS) contains
another key to another apparently surrealistic feature of GR.
2. Which reminds me of another cult fruit from that age: does anyone
know where the Warhol banana on the cover of 'The Velvet Underground
and Nico' comes from?
3. Chocolate-covered frozen bananas are visually, er, ambiguous, plus
they are associated with death here, and just like Bigfoot's character
is ambiguous and associated with death.

János

2009/9/1 Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>:
>
> 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
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