SOURCE: Glausser, Wayne. “Spots of Meaning: Literary Allusions in Max Apple's ‘Vegetable Love.’” Studies in Short Fiction 20, no. 4 (1983): 255–63.

In the below essay, Glausser examines Apple's use of literary allusions in the short story “Vegetable Love.”

Max Apple's fiction doesn't seem at all dense or recondite. Reviewers have described his stories in The Oranging of America as “lighthearted satire,” “unpretentious,” even “giggle-ridden.”¹ Apple's imagination thrives on materials offered by popular culture—Howard Johnson's, the Houston Astrodome, Let's Make a Deal, Ban Roll-On, and similar institutions and details of American low art. His characters often speak in what seems almost a pure language of cliché, using the tropes of real estate jargon, California buzz words, Time magazine style, and so on. Most readers come away from his work with an impression of Apple as a junk sculptor, creating estimable pieces of satiric art from the basest elements of American culture...