Sybil seems comfortable with Seymour-who she refers to as “see more”-and that’s reassuring. When the girl mentions her father’s imminent arrival, Seymour says he has been waiting for him, but we can’t tell he is teasing her or if he actually knows her father. Seymour speaks familiarly to the child, but in a bantering way. Their interaction is friendly but their relationship clear. Seymour is charming with the young girl, but we may think it odd that a grown man is playing with a little girl unrelated to him, with no other adults around. Sybil heads straight over to Seymour, who is lying on the beach in his bathrobe. A little child, Sybil Carpenter, is sent off to play while her mother goes for a martini (promising to bring Sybil the olive). The second section is where it gets odder-more playful but also creepier. From the mother’s insistent questions, despite casual comments on fashion and gossip, we sense Muriel’s husband is a ticking time-bomb. She also accepts that he mocks her, thinking it’s cute that he called her “Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948,” and seems most concerned that she knows nothing about the book by “the only great poet of the century” that he sent her from Germany, and which was in German. Salinger creates tension through the mannered dialogue between a concerned mother and her strong-willed daughter, who seems to want to ignore her husband’s issues since his return from combat. In the hotel, Seymour’s appearance prompts a psychiatrist on holiday to approach Muriel about him, but she treats the conversation dismissively. We also learn, obliquely, that he was recently released from a psychiatric hospital-too soon, according to one doctor. He may be suicidal (“business with the window” and “plans for passing away”).
Those horrible things he said to Granny about her plans for passing away.” After a second read, I conjectured that Seymour had been involved in an accident with his father-in-law’s car, perhaps involving trees, that may have been intentional. Muriel’s mother is quite frantic with concern for her daughter, and refers to a number of incidents involving Seymour’s instability, and in each case we can only infer what happened.
It took me a few reads of this opening sequence to catch what was actually going on, because Salinger ingeniously presents it to us as a straight dialogue, with almost no authorial interference, and a lot of interrupted sentences, as when two people are talking over each other or cutting each other off.
Muriel is a dismissive, unconcerned, and rather oblivious socialite who stuck with Seymour throughout the war, and doesn’t seem to realize that he returned a changed man, damaged goods, as so many poor, shell-shocked soldiers did (Salinger himself was one, and it is easy to project his biography onto Seymour Glass). Muriel is on holiday in Florida with her husband, Seymour, who was a soldier in the recently-ended Second World War. The first section features Muriel Glass on a long-distance call with her mother.
#A perfect day for banana fish plus
The story is divided into two sections, plus that whammy of a coda. It is there, of course, as it must be in all good stories-none of your deus ex machina business, but an honest surprise ending. In fact, I had to read it three times to feel that I “got it,” and I’m still not sure if I got all there is to get.Īt first glance, the story seems to begin in a banal manner, then becomes awkward, cute, creepy, before an explosive last paragraph that makes you flip quickly back to the beginning, to see if you might find foreshadowing that would have clued you in to the conclusion. It is a story that is easy to misread, because the treasures are in the details, a Christmas tree hung with baubles that are barely visible among the pine needles and tinsel. “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is just about perfect. Salinger: “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948)
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