Bananas
Entry updated 26 December 2023. Tagged: Publication.
Literary journal of fiction, Poetry and essays published from London in tabloid newspaper format. 26 issues dated January/February 1975 to April 1981; initially bimonthly, but the schedule soon slipped to quarterly and then became irregular. Edited by Emma Tennant to #11 (Summer 1978) – with various listed associate editors including J G Ballard – and thereafter by Abigail Mozley.
Though by no means a genre publication, the eclectic Bananas attracted a number of sf authors with avant-garde or New Wave leanings. J G Ballard had stories in ten of the first twelve issues, beginning with "The Air Disaster" in #1 (January/February 1975); John T Sladek was also a frequent contributor beginning with "Scenes from Rural Life" in #2 (Summer 1975); Angela Carter and Emma Tennant herself made multiple appearances, Carter's Bananas debut being the noted Werewolf tale "The Company of Wolves" in #7 (Spring 1977). One of several stories by Peter Wollen (1938-2019) was "Friendship's Death" in #4 (Spring 1976), which he later filmed as Friendship's Death (1987). Further fiction contributors with entries in this encyclopedia include Hilary Bailey, Jorge Luis Borges, Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates (with a reprint) and Josephine Saxton.
Nonfiction pieces were contributed by Paul Ableman, Thomas M Disch, Heathcote Williams – who wrote about William S Burroughs in #2 (Summer 1975) – and others. Poems came from Anthony Burgess, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Marilyn Hacker, Ted Hughes, George MacBeth, Peter Redgrove, Penelope Shuttle and many more. Among the illustrators were Judith Clute and Pamela Zoline. One more or less uncategorizable item was John T Sladek's full-page "The Rebus Version of Mein Kampf" in #4 (Spring 1976), laboriously spelling out a translated passage from Adolf Hitler's book in symbolic rebus form: sketches of a charwoman and a loaf for "daily bread", and so on.
A useful selection of the best material from the first seven issues is Bananas (anth 1977) edited by Emma Tennant. Her follow-up Saturday Night Reader (anth 1979) has much the same flavour but consists largely of new works by Bananas authors, with only two reprints from the magazine. [DRL]
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