Review of Andrew Moore's "Pawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit" (1st installment)

Released by Chelsea Green Publishing, Andy Moore’s book Pawpaw became available on Amazon in late August 2015. I had preordered it, so it arrived in my mailbox right around August 22, the day Amazon says it was released. I got through most of it before August ended, and I finished reading the volume’s appendices before the close of the first week of September. So here in February, I’m writing this review of Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit about six months after finishing the book. The review will have two installments.

In the first installment, I’ll discuss Pawpaw impressionistically. I’m not going to quote from it. I’m not even going to re-open it to remind myself of what it says. Rather, this first installment will be about Pawpaw as I remember it six months after the fact. So this first part of the review is designed to give readers an impression of what someone might take away from the book in the longer term: questions it raises and perspectives it changes with the extraordinary abundance of information it presents. (In the second installment, I’m going to re-open the book, look over and quote from passages I marked, and comment more directly on the specifics.) Here we go on the impressionist side of things…

A little while after I started reading Pawpaw, my sister stopped by. Since Moore’s book was one that I had been excited about for quite a while, I showed her the book immediately. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t as excited as I was. But I was caught off guard by the fact that she didn’t see that there was a self-evident need for a book exactly like this, outlining the pawpaw’s natural and cultural history, and its place in our present world. She wondered, “Wow I can’t believe someone was able to write an entire book about the pawpaw!” Meanwhile, I was wondering why it had taken humankind so long to write a book like this about the pawpaw. And I wondered why there weren’t more books about the pawpaw. How to explain the difference between our reactions?

I found some hints in Moore’s book. Throughout, Moore discusses not only a species of fruit but a species of person. The fruit: the pawpaw of course. The person: the kind who eats the pawpaw and then lets the pawpaw not only into the stomach but also, somehow, into the soul; and once inside, the essence of the pawpaw doesn’t just reside there but actually reshapes the soul. (There are varieties of people within this species of course. Some feel like the pawpaw’s existence is as stunning as learning that unicorns or griffins actually exist; for some, the pawpaw fervor prompts them to put their life savings on the line to plant a fruit orchard to grow fruit for which there is only limited demand; some people let the pawpaw’s soul-shaping quality do for them what religion might do for others; some people might drive hundreds or thousands of miles to a pawpaw festival; some might do a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to travel throughout the pawpaw’s home range, talking with other people who had their souls infiltrated and reshaped by the pawpaw.)

The pawpaw doesn’t do this for all people, obviously. (Take my sister and over 323 million Americans as a case in point). But there’s a contingent of people who learn of the pawpaw and then become…what would you call them? Moore uses several terms throughout his book to describe this species of person. I don’t think he said it directly, but I got the impression he never felt like he had landed on a term that was precisely right. I think he uses the terms pawpaw fans, pawpaw fanatics, and a few others, in an always-shifting vocabulary. But the term that sticks most in my mind is pawpaw booster. As I was reading, I liked that one best. For precision, I’ve just looked up the word booster, and I find definition a: “an enthusiastic supporter.” For some, that doesn’t seem quite adequate for the level of soul we’re talking about. Scrolling down to more eccentric definitions for booster, I find definition e: “the first stage of a multistage rocket providing thrust for the launching and the initial part of the flight.” The fire and smoke and thrust and danger and innovation and spectacular human yearning for some type of communion with the sublime universe—for some people, that might be more like it. Then again, it’s good that there’s some ambiguity in Moore’s term: if you’re reading this review, chances are you’re a pawpaw booster, and you yourself can look into your own soul to determine if you’re the former or the latter type of booster. No need to tell others which type—just your affirmation that you are indeed a booster is enough. (No offense to apples, oranges, or bananas, but they don’t tend to infiltrate the soul like the pawpaw.)  

Another thing that I’ve mulled over since reading Pawpaw has been the question of the fruit’s evident increase in popularity over the past few years. As Moore says, pawpaw festivals are springing up all over the place. (It happened after Moore published his book, but I’ll add that this list of festivals includes, for as humble as it was, the First Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival.) As Moore says, the pawpaw became “hip” during the time it took him to write his book. On one hand, as a pawpaw booster myself, this is good news. I’m glad that pawpaw boosters who have dedicated their lives and savings to growing pawpaw orchards can find ways to make that pay, whether it’s by selling pawpaws to upscale restaurants in NYC (where foodies may enjoy one-off tastes of the largest “Native American” fruit) or to microbreweries (whose patrons may be more dedicated to varieties of beer than they are to the soulful fruit that inspires their brew). And I’m glad there are more pawpaw festivals, even if easy access to festivals may no longer require or promote the sense of pilgrimage that the original festival, the Ohio Pawpaw Festival, required of my wife and our friend Katy when they drove from Virginia to Ohio in September 2007.

But as you hear me saying I’m glad about these things, you also hear me half-way feeling some regret about the potential loss of a certain human relation to the pawpaw—as the pawpaw becomes more mainstreamed like an apple, orange, or banana, it may run the risk of losing boosters in the old, high way: the way of the multi-stage rocket and spectacular human yearning. But that’s a regret I don’t really feel. That kind of regret would be too much a cross between some type of biblical prophet crying in the wilderness and a clichéd sixteen-year-old in the 1990s gnashing teeth over the perception that a formerly underground band (let’s just say Pearl Jam) had “sold out” after their first album. (Incidentally, I was talking with a group of 18- to 22-year-olds a few months ago, and they didn’t know what “sold out” meant. They thought it meant that a band’s merchandise was no longer available because it had all been sold.) So then the twinge of regret…what is it? It’s not so much even regret as it is a recognition, inspired by Moore’s book, of the perpetually changing human relation to the pawpaw. And there’s some wonder in thinking about what might come next.  

Finally, Moore’s book got me thinking about how and when to invest time and space in growing pawpaw cultivars. He’s got a great section (an appendix) that describes, in alphabetical order, many popular and more obscure pawpaw cultivars. The entries give some history and taste and texture information on the cultivars, often drawing on quotes from people he’s talked with. Some are prize cultivars of early years, like the Wells. But with the advances in quality for pawpaw cultivars, those earlier cultivars are falling out of cultivation. For instance, the year after I bought the Wells from One Green World, the nursery stopped carrying it. When I realized that One Green World had found such limited demand for it that it needed to be discontinued, I involuntarily regretted that I had planted it, since when you buy a gadget (even for your yard) you don’t want to buy it right before it’s obsolete. After I realized it was discontinued, I thought about pulling up my Wells cultivar and getting a newer model, but that would cost me a year’s growth, and a pawpaw isn't an Apple, something to get rid of after two years. So I kept it. And then Pawpaw also talks about the newest and sleekest models: the Peterson Pawpaws and the KSU-Atwood. Now those are some nice pawpaws, I thought as I read. But then I realized that, as Moore reports, newer cultivars should be coming online in the next few years, and I asked: why buy the KSU-Atwood or Peterson’s Shenandoah when I might wait a few years and buy the next new cultivar out of Kentucky State University or, better, maybe if it’s ever released, a grafting from the tree that Moore reports has been consistently winning the biggest pawpaw prize at the festival in Ohio?

Was I overthinking all of this? Probably so—I’ve just got a humble front yard orchard of four (soon to be six) pawpaw trees. And all this thinking about cultivars (for as intriguing as it’s been) has distanced me a bit from my hardscrabble pawpaw roots, back when we just wanted pawpaws—any pawpaws—so bad that we would trespass to get wild ones, or brave the battering-ram hoofs and scimitar horns of a bull during Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004.

So these are some of the issues Andrew Moore’s book has raised for me in the six months since I read it. I want to finish up this installment with an endorsement, something to reflect the way the book has stuck with me during the past six months, like (as Moore so vividly describes at a certain point) the scent of a single ripe pawpaw that can hang strong in the air and fill an entire home:

The pawpaw has always deserved a monument. One version of the monument might have been twenty feet tall and cast in bronze by an Italian sculptor, and then shipped over to the United States for display at Monticello or Mount Vernon in the early nineteenth century. One problem is: that didn’t happen. Another problem is: the shape of a single pawpaw doesn’t have enough visual interest to merit a bronze statue (sorry, it just doesn’t). But pawpaws are much more than their shape. Andrew Moore’s book Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit is the monument that the pawpaw has always deserved, printed on paper rather than cast in bronze, so that it can offer up the fruit’s multi-layered and volatile cultural texture and taste in a way that approaches the pawpaw’s own texture and taste when shaken from the tree growing in a thicket in some lost holler.

Pawpaw Order: Mango Cultivar and Susquehanna Cultivar

Yesterday I ordered four trees from One Green World, scheduled to be delivered in the spring. Two were pawpaw cultivars: the Mango and the Susquehanna.  (And since this is a pawpaw blog and not a persimmon blog, I'll relegate this information to a parenthesis: two were American persimmon cultivars, the Prairie Sun and the Prairie Star.)

The Susquehanna is one of the Peterson Pawpaws and is supposed to give the biggest fruit (sometimes over a pound each) among the readily available cultivars. And the Mango is supposed to be a fast grower. I've also read somewhere that the fruit is "slimy," which is actually appealing, since my sense is that a lot of pawpaw breeding has been working to make firmer pawpaws, eliminating the mushiness that I appreciate so much in wild pawpaws. Speaking to this point, Andy Moore in his must-read book Pawpaw reports that one Jerry Dedon says of the Mango cultivar: "It was real good...but that rascal will deteriorate fast. And I mean it will get just like a water balloon." We'll see...in four years or so, that's when we'll see.

That Song about Pawpaws & Those Other Pawpaw Songs

Most people, if they've been introduced to the pawpaw, have had their introduction through the song "Paw Paw Patch" aka "Way Down Yonder in the Pawpaw Patch." This song is taught sometimes in schools, even outside of the pawpaw's home range. Even pretty far outside the pawpaw's home range, as indicated by the fact that the government of Utah has posted an online lesson plan, with the song and accompanying activities, for teaching elementary school students about the pawpaw. Find the sheet music and lesson plan here. (Actually, the lesson plan doesn't give much detail on the fruit itself; I think it's more focused on teaching children to put things in a basket.) If you're feeling like a sloth bear and don't want to look at the lesson plan, you can take just a quick glance at this most famous song about pawpaws below. (Click to enlarge if you want.)

Beyond the most famous song about pawpaws, there are a few others that people often recall when they hear about a fruit called the pawpaw. In Disney's The Jungle Book (1967), there's a song called "Bare Necessities" that has the sloth bear Baloo singing to the orphaned boy Mowgli:

Now when you pick a pawpaw

Or a prickly pear

And you prick a raw paw

Next time beware

Don't pick the prickly pear by the paw

When you pick a pear

Try to use the claw

But you don't need to use the claw

When you pick a pear of the big pawpaw

Have I given you a clue?

The bare necessities of life will come to you

They'll come to you!

This song offers a fairly bizarre set of confusions about pawpaws specifically and fruit and geography more generally. First off, it's set in India, so one would expect that the pawpaw Baloo refers to would be the papaya (confusingly, to US-based pawpaw boosters, the papaya is sometimes referred to by the term pawpaw). So again, given that the story is set in India, one would at first think the "pawpaw" of the song is a papaya. But then the song continues and conflates the "pawpaw" with the "prickly pear," which is of course a cactus (and cactuses are native only to the Americas). So...maybe the rest of the movie is set in India, but this particular song is set in America? 

Here's Baloo going after the prickly pear while singing about the pawpaw

Given that the prickly pear reference gets us back to America, it's no longer necessary that the pawpaw Baloo sings about be a papaya. Since both the pawpaw (Asimina triloba) and the papaya are native to America, it's really a coin toss as to which "pawpaw" Baloo is referring. The "big pawpaw" Baloo picks later isn't really a match for either the pawpaw or the papaya. But given the message of the song, Baloo is probably not worried about which pawpaw he's talking about. (The papaya is native to the Americas but has been naturalized in the tropics all over the world, and Baloo doesn't worry about that either.)

Moving along to one last song, I'm including the sheet music for one that was written and performed in England in the 1910s. As you'll see, if you read the lyrics (click to enlarge), the song is set in the tropics, so the papaya would at first seem to be the most likely referent for the fruit mentioned in the song's title. That's fair. But I'll just say that the lyrics for the song were written by a US author whose family had roots in Virginia, which has a very fine pawpaw scene. And so, what we have here may be a case of the pawpaw (Asimina triloba) being transplanted, by means of a song written and performed in London, to Africa.