The cover of Rich Cohen’s engrossing tale of the life of Sam Zemurray shows a banana sprouting from Zemurray’s head like a big curved penis. If you accept that analogy, then Zemurray’s head occupies the position of a lone and scrotally wrinkly testicle, and you have to feel for that testicle, which seems to be sustaining the towering erection above without the help of its wonted companion.
I say what I learned from Cohen more in sincerity than in derision: Sam Zemurray really was that testicle. He was a font of rugged masculinity, a warrior, a “tough Jew,” as Cohen likes to say. He was, according to Cohen, “a berserker, who says, ‘if you’re going to fight me, you better kill me.’”
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