The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich CohenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Those of us familiar with the biblical story of the Jewish patriarch Jacob won't get too far into The Fish That Ate the Whale before recognizing the similarities between him and Sam Zemuray, the subject of Rich Cohen's outstanding biography. The constant scheming, striving and conniving is evident in them both. Both were exiles. Both worked tirelessly beyond the limits of human expectations. Both lost a son (kind of). Both achieved their goals even when it cost them dearly. One is a descendant of the other although both didn't have the same end or regrets. The Fish that Ate the Whale is in a way the ancestral story of the Jewish people through the lifespan of a single man.
Inevitably, as the story unfolds, you ask yourself 'How could God not be with a man like this?' And at the same time you're also confronted with its opposite corolary, 'How could He be?' Sam Zemuray's life is a puzzle. By all external measures of success in the marketplace, few lives parallel his. He had it all and when he couldn't have it all he literally would resort to whatever means necessary to achieve having it all.
Sam the Banana Man's story is an unforgettable story. It is too good to be true and yet it is true, all of it. The story of this one man's life is so powerful and wrenching and disgusting and powerful and wrenching again that you will not be able to forget it even if you wanted to.
Not only are we introduced to "El Gringo" (he was actually Russian) since his penniless arrival to the USA. In The Fish that ate the Whale, the author takes the reader by the hand on an excursion with historical, military and political turns that leave you dumbfounded.
From Alabama to New Orleans, to Central America to the Caribbean basin to the world, Sam Zemurray left no land unturned as the ultimate crusader of the perfect crop that is the banana. Irony of ironies to find out that the banana is the most widely consumed fruit in the United States, but cannot grow anywhere in it!
Obviously, Zemuray was a man of his times, a true believer in progress. It was just that the only progress that mattered most was his own and that of his company. Those countries that grow the bananas for us? They are our means to our ends - "El Pulpo's" (United Fruit Co.'s namesake) objective was to increase value for its shareholders. This was done methodically and unscrupulously for years and decades at the expense of real people and real countries. So this is as well the story of an era and a country, the USA, busting its doors open to modernity and swallowing up without flinching everything a modern capitalist world had to offer.
But every too-good-to-be-true story must come to end and Sam Zemuray's story was no different. In reality, it could have been a different story, a much better, grander story, but that's unfair. He knew no better. He was the north star so he followed it faithfully until there was no more following to do.
The scope of Zemuray's life is impressive. Unquenchable ambition and greed, wit, will, grit, determination, in one word, balls. Some these things are bad in themselves. It's the combination with the other ones that will take you to places you didn't foresee and situations you thought you were insulated from. Well, think again.
I want to thank Rich Cohen for giving us such a biographical gem, an incredible but true life story for all of us to enjoy and learn from, both the good and the bad. It touches close to my heart because as a Latino you're able to see upclose (as never before in my case) the remorseless plunder of our countries by people whose only guiding value is making money. This does not mean lives like Zemuray's aren't valuable or to be appreciated. Quite the contrary. In the land of the living you're boudn to learn a whole lot by lives like his insofar as they serve as cautionary tales.
It is not up to me to pass judgement upon a man's soul's ultimate destiny, but Jesus Christ's question in the gospel of Matthew - And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? - comes to mind. I do hope Sam Zemuray didn't lose his.
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