IVIV Why 'chocolate-covered bananas? p.22

[Mark Kohut]

Warhol, I believe----re Velvet Underground cover.

Trivial bit of autobiography. When young, the Church I attended was Andy's.
Same exact one, not just the same Faith in the same part of town. (I actually lived in a different part of the city)

Did not know that, of course, until decades later. 

--- On Tue, 9/1/09, János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV Why 'chocolate-covered bananas? p.22
> To: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 9:42 AM
> 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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