By Paul Greenberg and Yvonne Greenberg
SAN DIEGO — “When I now pick out bananas to eat, I always pick out the ones that are covered with freckles because those are the ripe ones. (Before doing this book) those are the ones I used to avoid,” explained Rich Cohen, author of The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King, in a phone interview from Connecticut, where he resides.
Cohen will appear at the San Diego Jewish book Fair at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, Jacobs Family Campus, on Thursday, November 8, at 7:30 P.M. to discuss the book.
The Fish That Ate The Whale, his latest book, which took him about six years to complete working full-time, is a rich narrative detailing the colorful and often-turbulent life and times of Sam Zemurray, nicknamed “Sam The Banana Man.” Born in 1877 in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian Empire, he died in present-day Chisinau, Moldova in 1961.
He emigrated with his poor Jewish family to the United States when he was 14. Despite no formal education, he entered the banana trade in Alabama at age 18 and his early wealth was based on a very successful business venture in New Orleans, Louisiana. By age 18, he had earned $100,000 by buying bananas cheaply and selling them locally and along the rail lines to grocers. Before him, the bananas that ripened in the transport ships were discarded upon arrival at the port because they could not be delivered quickly enough to market to avoid spoilage.
The book also describes Zemurray’s getting heavily in debt to the Honduras government after buying a substantial amount of land for his business. To help himself get out of debt, he devised a plan to save his business where he enlisted the help of two mercenaries and the deposed Honduran President, Manuel Bonilla, using a ship full of weapons, to overthrow the government of Honduras in a military coup. Bonilla was returned as leader, and granted Zemurray the low taxes and land concessions that he wanted that saved his business.
In 1930, Zemurray sold his company, Cuyamel Fruit, to rival United Fruit Company for $31.5 million in stock and abruptly retired. His retirement was short-lived, however, because United Fruit suffered financially (losing 90% of its stock value) because of mismanagement and The Great Depression. This prompted Zemurray to get re-involved in the banana business by buying a controlling share of United Fruit, and was able to return the company to profitability.
Later, convinced that Colonel Jacobo Arenz of Guatemala planned to expropriate unused land owned by United Fruit and redistribute it to local peasants, United Fruit and the U.S. State Department engaged in a public relations campaign to convince the American government and its people that Arenz intended to make Guatemela a Soviet satellite. Zemurray used Edward Bernays (referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”) to launch a propaganda campaign against Arenz’s democratically elected government. The campaign was successful and the CIA launched a coup that replaced Arenz with a military junta lead by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas.
“I decided to write a book about Zemurray because he was the perfect immigrant story; it was the best and worst of the American Dream. The whole thing as an immigrant is finding a product everyone else has overlooked. And, in finding value where other people saw no value because if people saw value, they wouldn’t let you into the market. With him, it was ripe brown bananas with more than one brown freckle on them. It is also the story of my own grandparents, who were immigrants from Poland and Russia and I felt by telling his fascinating story, it was also the story of generations that came before him. However, I first learned about Zemurray when I went to Tulane University. He was a benefactor of the school, the president of Tulane’s house was once Zemurray’s house and some of the dorms were named after him. Stepping into the President’s house was like stepping through a time portal into a day and age when there were banana tycoons and banana kings, and Zemurray was the biggest and best of them. I became fascinated by him and I met a lot of teachers at Tulane that were also intrigued by Zemurray and told stories about him in the same way in the F. Scott Fitzgerald book that people told stories about Gatsby. I actually wrote a chapter about him in my previous book, Isreal Is Real, because of his involvement with Zionism and Chaim Weitzmann.” (Zemurray and his family also made generous donations to the Zionist movement, to the Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School, and contributed to left-wing causes, such as The Nation Magazine.)
What did you find most rewarding and difficult about the whole process of doing the book? “I loved the reporting and spending time in Honduras and a lot of time in New Orleans. I loved meeting the people who were around him at the time, and their stories, and the experience was sort of satisfying. And it was interesting to see how much the world of Central America had changed since that time and how much it had remained the same.
“The book hasn’t been published in Spanish but it is being published in Chinese. Hopefully, it will be published in Hebrew. The problem with Hebrew is that it is a very small market and most of the people who can read books like this in Hebrew want to read the original in English. I do think Zemurray’s story would be really great as a six-part miniseries. I would have Sacha Baron Cohen play him, which would be a career change for him. A tall, sort of rangy guy like that would be good. My editor, who is a great editor, who has different tastes and culture than I do, thought his story should be made into an opera or musical.
“I am just excited about coming to the San Diego Jewish Book Fair. I’ve been to the San Diego Jewish Book Fair for most of my books. I think it is the best book fair in the country because, first of all, it is such a beautiful place, so it is just great to go there, and then, second of all, they have really big and vibrant crowds of people that really love to read books.”
Rich Cohen, age 44, is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone Magazines. His other notable non-fiction books include Tough Jews, The Avengers, The Record Men, and Sweet and Low. He has won numerous awards for his essays and books.
*
Yvonne and Paul Greenberg are mother and son. They may be contacted at yvonne.greenberg@sdjewishworld.com