Bananas in Literature

[Basil]

Hey guys, here's a thread where we can list and discuss our favorite instances of bananas appearing in literature!! Anyone got some they'd like to talk about?

[Jay]

Jeanette Winterson coming to mind, Sexing The Cherry... did you have anything in particular on your mind Basil?

[Basil]

Jeanette Winterson coming to mind, Sexing The Cherry... did you have anything in particular on your mind Basil?
Besides bananas? No, not really! :p

*SPOILER FOR AS I LAY DYING*

I really like how in the final scene, after the Bundrens' harrowing journey, battling hell and highwater to succeed in their quest, losing their brother Darl to insanity . . . they just stand around, eating bananas! Such a brilliantly ludicrous scene!

:banana:

[Scheherazade]

Here is a little poem I remember:

I know a monkey who likes bananas
She eats a lot her name is Anna
She ate too much and got a tummy ache,
How much medicine tablets did it take??


:p

[Basil]

Here is a little poem I remember:

I know a monkey who likes bananas
She eats a lot her name is Anna
She ate too much and got a tummy ache,
How much medicine tablets did it take??

Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke, Scher? Because I'm not laughing.

[Basil]

This thread was supposed to be a place for a serious discussion of bananas in literature...and...and you...

*runs away, sobbing*

[Jay]

Here, have a banana ;)

[Basil]

*sniff*
well . . . ok.

I guess I may have overreacted, huh?

I'm sorry, Scher. I like your banana poem. :)

[Scheherazade]

Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke, Scher? Because I'm not laughing.
Hey! Anna Banana is a *very* serious book:

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/3830000/3835428.gif

Anna Banana: 101 Jump Rope Rhymes

ANNOTATION
An illustrated collection of jump rope rhymes arranged according to the type of jumping they are meant to accompany.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
How many times can you jump rope? This rhyme makes the game of rope jumping even more fun. It's a counting rhyme, and there are lots of others like it. There are also red-hot pepper rhymes for jumping very fast, and rhymes for jumping in and out of the rope. There are even fortune-telling rhymes that answer questions and help you predict the future!
The rhymes in this book began as a way to keep the rhythm while jumping rope, but they also lent poetry and humor to the game. Here are over one hundred traditional rhymes that will make rope jumping challenging and, best of all, fun.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=Rc22JcqBqi&isbn=0688088090&itm=1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0688088090/ref=sib_rdr_dp/002-0770963-1394462?%5Fencoding=UTF8&no=283155&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&st=books

[Basil]

That's really nice of you to include two links, Scher . . . in case one doesn't work, there's a back-up!

[Koa]

The only banana I can think about is Banana Yoshimoto...

[Basil]

Q. How did you come up with this pen name, Banana?
A. Just because I love banana flowers.
That's from her official site. Is she good? I never heard of her . . .

[Scheherazade]

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Mauricio Babilonia works as a banana picker.


*is hoping to redeem herself by a 'seriouser' contribution to the thread*

[Koa]

That's from her official site. Is she good? I never heard of her . . .

She's really famous down here, I think some of her books are ok, though I always have some perplexity about them. I think her most famous work is Kitchen which I think is worth reading, I read it a few times and the first one when I was very young so it left a very strange perception on me, and I didnt understand much...But reading later on proved that it had a point... I enjoyed others of her works, whose titles I dont remember now (I think one was called Amrita and one something like K.P. or some letters like that) and as I said I liked them though maybe not everything convinced me...

[Basil]

The Uncertainty of the Poet

I am a poet.
I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.
I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.
I am very fond.

A fond poet of 'I am, I am'-
Very bananas.

Fond of 'Am I bananas?
Am I?' - a very poet.

Bananas of a poet!
Am I fond? Am I very?

Poet bananas! I am.
I am fond of a 'very.'

I am of very fond bananas.
Am I a poet?

Wendy Cope

[nothingman87]

WARNING! ***Spoiler of a Salinger short story***


Not a reference to an actual banana but in J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" Seymour Glass has the conversation with the child on the beach about bananafish before ultimately shooting himself in his hotel room.

[baddad]

I saw an 'exotic dancer' named Anna Banana years ago..........does that count as literary or artistic?

[Basil]

Hmmm, I'm not sure . . . perhaps you should tell me about the incident in explicit, minute detail--leaving nothing out--so that I might make a more informed decision. Start with her measurements.

[Scheherazade]

Not gonna demand to see a photo??? :eek:

[Basil]

Pictures pale in comparison to the power of my imagination!

[Scheherazade]

Perhaps, you would let us see the picture you had in your imagination then! :D


In Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by J. Winterson, the two ladies who 'co-habit' and run the newsagent where Jeanette gets her comics give banana bars... Very symbolic.

*nods knowingly*

[Scheherazade]

So, I am reading As I Lay Dying (in case anyone left on the Forum who hasn't caught up on this yet! :p) and couldn't help remembering this thread.
Dewey Dell said we will get some bananas. The train is behind the glass, red on the track. When it runs the track shines on and off. Pa said flour and sugar and coffee costs so much. Because I am a country boy because boys in town. Bicycles. Why do flour and sugar and coffee cost so much when he is a country boy. "Wouldn't you ruther have some bananas instead?" Bananas are gone, eaten. Gone. When it runs on the track shines again. "Why ain't I a town boy, pa?" I said God made me. I did not said to God to made me in the country. If He can make the train, why can't He make them all in the town because flour and sugar and coffee. "Wouldn't you ruther have bananas?"

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I saw a book with bananas in it once - can't remember the title - it had lots of pictures of ladies in it - on reflection, perhaps not the kind of literature you had in mind. :brow:

[Scheherazade]

TESCO Fresh Vegetables and Fruits Catalogue - 2006???

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Of course there is always Woody Allen's script for Bananas.

Anything with the line, "I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts." has to be literature in my world. ;)

[Petrarch's Love]

There's a Carl Sandburg poem with a banana reference that seems to imply that banana sellers have all the answers:


And the answer comes slow.
There seems to be no answer.
I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the
why of it.
-Carl Sandburg, from "Old-Fashioned Requited Love"


There aren't nearly enough of these guys on this thread: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:

[chmpman]

Who wrote the Chinese collection of haiku and prose, "Narrow Road of the Interior"? This had an allusion to a banana tree, and the writer's name was taken for the Chinese for banana tree I believe.

[Scheherazade]

There aren't nearly enough of these guys on this thread: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:But... but... but those smilies... those smilies only serve to objectify bananas... Look at them dancing like they haven't got a care in the world yet we all know better, don't we? *nods knowingly*

[beer good]

And of course, there's the Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Yoshimoto).

[Scheherazade]

There is a dead banana tree in front of the Reilly's house in A Confederacy of Dunces:
A frozen banana tree, brown and stricken, languished against the front of the porch, the tree preparing to collapse as the iron fence had done long ago.Chapter 2, III


Ignatius staggered up the bbrick path to the house, climbed the steps painfully, and rang the bell. One stalk of the dead banana tree had expired and collapsed stiffly onto the hood of the Plymouth.Chapter 3, I

[dfloyd]

A Perfect Day for Bananafish, but someone beat me to it. And I thought no one but me had ever read it.

[tudwell]

In Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, the character Pirate Prentice, a British officer in World War II, is famous for his banana breakfasts that he cooks for all the other soldiers. I believe he even has a greenhouse full of bananas on top of the building that he lives in.

[joebob]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnop5Cnzt6M

[Barbarous]

In Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, the character Pirate Prentice, a British officer in World War II, is famous for his banana breakfasts that he cooks for all the other soldiers. I believe he even has a greenhouse full of bananas on top of the building that he lives in.

argh! I was going to mention this! Funny scene for a great book.

[Annamariah]

I will always remember a children's book in which the characters were guessing who will arrive next. One particular poem went like this:

"Usko joka sanaani, seuraava on BANAANI" ("Believe my every word, the next one will be a BANANA"), and true enough, a banana walked in! :banana: