Apple Review #27: Ribston Pippin

Halloween should be a whole week. Halloweek. I mean, for those who are truly devoted, it’s the whole month of October, or for those truly obsessed (which is to say, correctly obsessed), it’s the whole year. Still, I just mean — it’d be great to have this week be a formalized week-long holiday. Or helliday! The Seven Days of Scares, like the Twelve Days of Christmas.

On the seventh night of Scare Week my Ghoul Love gave to me

Seven wolves-a-werein’

Six freaks-a-flayin’

Fiiiiiive Frankensteeeeeiiins

Four demon clowns

Three night hags

Two strangle gloves

And a slasher in a cornfiiiieeeeld

Anyway.

The big question is, why did I try to make apples scary? I love apples. Why make them the monster in Black River Orchard? (That book is available now hint hint poke poke oh and also Book of Accidents has references to that book even before I formally wrote it and oh shit TBOA is still only $4.99 at your various e-book merchant sites for reasons mysterious)? Why create the sinister Ruby Slipper apple? IF LOVE APPLES, WHY BETRAY THEM SO

Well, first, really the apple isn’t evil, per se — I mean, it is, but it’s really what it does to the people who eat it. Those who eat it and let the monster in, so to speak, were already capable of doing evil — the apple is just there to give them that sweet, sweet nudge. But still, the question persists: why apples?

I think in part it’s because eating an apple is such a visceral experience. You could argue, as many have in the past, that there’s something almost carnal about it — apples have long been associated with romance and sex, but also like, immortality and forbidden knowledge, too. Hell, Eris’ apple helped foment the envy necessary to start a whole goddamn war. And in eating an apple, it’s not a hard jump to find that carnal, erotic space and spin it to something altogether more grotesque at the same time. Juices flooding the mouth: sexy. Biting through a deep crunch of flesh: less overtly sexy and more cannibalistic. (Though don’t let me kink-shame you sexy cannibals out there.) This red, lush, round apple — biting through it, skin into flesh, all that sweetness flooding out, but don’t eat the seeds, they say — it’s just a very, and I know I used the word already, visceral thing.

And then the whole grafting process is its own kind of horror — the sheer human ego of saying, I want more of this fruit and so I must rip the limbs off this one tree, then cut the limb off a second tree and force the new limb onto the old injury. You might even clip the branches off the tree to which you grafted the new branches in order to ensure it no longer grows the apple you don’t want it to grow. Or you might try to get one apple tree to grow multiple varieties. That’s fucked up! That’s botanical body horror, baby. Doctor Frankenstein as a mad orchardist was part of that seed (ahem) that planted in my brain meat before writing the book. Hell, Johnny Appleseed considered grafting an act that was an affront to God! How fucking horror genre is that??

Plus, when you get into the cultural ramifications of the apple — not just mythological, but the American aspect of apples — you might see it as a fruit of colonization, a fruit given to indigenous who were then punished for being too successful (maybe even more successful) with it. It’s a fruit where once, if you planted the trees, it conferred ownership of the land upon you. And the apple itself was first a fruit associated with prurient attitudes — lustful carnality — and further tied to alcoholic consumption through cider. Then, there’s that cultural shift, demanding we view those things (sex and drinking) as sins, and the apple is forced into a role of serving as an icon of purity. That, done through Prohibition, through the act of burning down Johnny Appleseed’s cider orchards. Also done through the commodification of agriculture (see: the Red Delicious). Fruits that are shiny and perfect and inevitably dull. Glossed up, but flavorless, dry, absolutely unsexy. Plus, no drinking the boozy fruits, no no no. That’s a sin. No drink, no sex, no drinky sexy apple time. The phrase arose: as American as apple pie — even though apple pie isn’t even American at all. Just one more aspect of our cruel, callous cultural domination and colonization.

Anyway. All that stuff is fascinating. Even glimpsing the dark heart of agriculture and farming — fascinating stuff. So, that’s where you get apple horror. At least, that’s where my head goes. Even though apples are a thing I love, it’s both fun and interesting and, yes, horrifying to tackle that thing and turn it into terror.

Anyway, fuck all that, let’s review an apple.

My review of a Scott Farm (VT) Ribston Pippin, late-Oct:

As I’ve noted, most heirloom apples are either vampires or hobbits, and I’d say Ribston Pippin is a hobbit, for sure — though he might also be a cruel clergyman from Jane Eyre, who can say.

It’s going to be difficult not to keep this review short, because, the Ribston Pippin is a parent of the Cox’s Orange Pippin, one of my favorite apples. And as such, it’s like a lesser version of the Cox. That’s it. Take a Cox’s Orange Pippin, dial down most of the things about it, and you have the Ribston Pippin. The one thing it has is, it’s easily as nice looking as the Cox (tee-hee). It has that reddish-orange vibe and is pleasing to the eye, just less pleasing to the mouth.

It’s a perfectly nice apple!

Just, a little less sweet.

A little less tart.

A lot less of its tropical vibe.

Overall, just less interesting. The one interesting flavor is that it has kind of a weird musty dusty “used bookstore” flavor.

It’s a good apple, and I liked it, but the Cox’s is the superior apple, full-stop.

Watch me eat it here.

Ribston Pippin: The student has become the master, which puts the master out to pasture, sorry Ribston Pippin, you’re old news