Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen

1 review

pmhandley's review against another edition

adventurous informative medium-paced

2.5

I learned about Zemurray much the same way the author did: in college at Tulane. I saw his name on some buildings and even did a semester of work study at MARI, where the Zemurray collections were located. I somehow missed in my 4 years there that the university President's residence next door had been Zemurray's. (Based on Zemurray's feelings on public giving, this seems intentional.) I vaguely remember being in downtown New Orleans and accidentally stumbling across the United Fruit building. This is to say I had to put some effort into not letting nostalgia get in the way of my thoughts on this book. It is incredibly readable. Cohen is a gifted writer and storyteller, and Zemurray was a fascinating man. On its face, I would say this book is thoroughly enjoyable. However, I had a nagging feeling throughout the book that Cohen lets Zemurray off too easy. It leans towards hagiography. There's obligatory acknowledgment that he did some bad things, but it gets hedged in him being a complicated man. He was complicated, true, but that doesn't really account for overthrowing the Honduran and Guatemalan governments in the name of bananas. His opposition to desegregating Tulane is a brief parenthetical. His keeping of artifacts from the isthmus banana fields is not examined; no one questions why his collection belongs at Tulane and not in Central America where they came from. His role in Israel and the ramifications it's had in today's Middle East conflict is not considered. The labor conditions of the plantations are not mentioned. The author spends paragraphs speculating on why Zemurray did not embrace his Jewish heritage once in America and suggests he wanted to escape it, while admitting he has no evidence to base this assertion on. He suggests Zemurray's only regret might have been not raising his kids to be Jewish, which maybe that was a regret, but it's a pretty tall claim to make it would be his only regret considering his role in overthrowing multiple governments, which had human casualties. All of these negatives are nodded at, but painted as "it's complicated" and as part of a nuanced man. Can anyone really say Central America is better off because of Cuyamel and United Fruit? 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: War, Suicide, and Child death