by Lorraine Ray
Later that day I started the ratty beginning of a novel about a young man who was associated with a banana ripening plant. I heard about the whole set-up from Dad in one of his lengthy engineering stories, probably a reaction to his frustration with Bernie, the architect, and he sat at his drafting table and went blundering about telling me unsystematically about the ripening chamber plans and the layout, the technical problems with materials of the pipes, the various temperature difficulties of this actual banana plant’s equipment. “In went the bananas. Laid out on tables like they were going to be operated on. And the gas came in later, kid. It was an interesting set up they had there to deal with the gas from a catalytic generator and the venting. Ethylene gas is difficult at times to deal with and they had installed the pipes in a series, very interesting to see it. I went there in order to see what was going on. I was called in as a consulting engineer. What? Not insulting engineer, kid, but that is funny, consulting, consulting, kid. A great deal of gas needed to be stored in ideal conditions and it was a tough engineering feat, kid, and it’s not easy to keep it going. And the dead tarantulas were on the floors. What? Where did the tarantulas come in? They came out of the banana bunches, you crazy kid. Aren’t you even listening? Can’t imagine it, can you? The gas was to ripen them quickly and then the bananas were shipped on to the east. We had this plant here. A sizable operation. Killed the tarantulas, too. They were on the floor, legs in the air.” He showed me a flipped over hand with stiff fingers.
Along with this there came the image of the aftermath of the pumping of a gas into the chamber full of bananas and the image of dead tarantulas littering the floor which frankly I stole from the memory of my father to deliver to you. All the dead tarantulas scattered about under the bananas resembled my precious shorthand. And were lifeless the way my writing was. Nothing happened in this novel. Nothing at all happened. What was the point of the lifeless prose? So there was supposed to be a deeply dissatisfied youth, the child of the owner of the banana ripening plant and his unhappiness was going to be so poignant, but I couldn’t get to it. What was it he didn’t like about his life? What was the source of his disinterest? Was it that his father made his living off bananas? Would that make a good living or a good novel? Was it a sensible statement at all? Did it even relate to life in the United States given that the product was not at all from the United States? I realized bananas did not represent America very well. Bananas might be a suitable image for a novel from a Central American country, yes, the proverbial banana republic. Damn, it wasn’t good for any kind of serious novel and I so wanted my novel to be serious, above all things serious. Seriously serious. Who would write a goofy Great American Novel? It would be a disaster.
“Couched against a guava crate.” That was the sentence describing the opening image of this deeply dissatisfied youth couching against a guava crate at the banana ripening plant. This plant was providing much of the nation with bananas. Why was a guava crate there? But where was the dignity or great symbolism that a great work of fiction would need? I couldn’t see it in this. How could people get worked up, emotional and profoundly stirred, by an image of a banana ripening plant? How would my character get so deeply dissatisfied? Even if it provided a lot of the nation with bananas, wasn’t that comical rather than tragic?
I fell into a despair that mimicked the despair I tried to create in my character, the heir of the banana ripening plant.
Why did the one product I had actually learned about have to be silly? No one could get too worked up about bananas and their ripening. Other authors had serious things to get worked up about. Death of a salesman. Ruined plantations. Folksy general stores. Why did I have to learn nonsense? Authors had war and peace, adultery, and murder. I had bananas—ripening.