#23: A Perfect Day For Bananafish by J.D. Salinger
Available: Nine Stories
Influence on: John Updike, Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Safran Foer
What makes a twist ending different from one which simply continues on from themes already developed? To my mind, A Perfect Day for Bananafish falls clearly in the latter category but there are many who’d argue its surprise ending is unwarranted given what has come before. Like much of Salinger’s work, it divides people, if only because of the ambiguity in which Salinger presents seemingly black and white events.
The Story
Bananafish begins with Muriel Glass calling her mother on the telephone from a hotel on the beach. As the conversation unfolds, we discover various threads revealed masterfully through dialogue. Muriel’s husband Seymour has been displaying erratic behaviour of late: he has recently written off the family car, he’s been saying horrible things to Muriel’s grandmother and he’s done something with their pictures from Bermuda. He has also recently been discharged from military service, although the army psychiatrist has his doubts about Seymour’s sanity. Muriel and her mother argue, with the former thinking Seymour is just fine and the latter convinced they need to head home as soon as possible.
The scene shifts to a young girl Sybil on the beach. She bumps into Seymour sunbaking and they start up a conversation. They head out into the water and talk about all sorts of things including the imaginary bananafish of the title. Eventually he leads her back to the shore and heads back to the hotel.
Why It Sticks
Salinger is a master of dialogue. In his collection Nine Stories (released in the UK and Australia as For Esme, with love and Squalor), stories such as Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut, For Esme, and Teddy all construct vivid characters primarily through conversation. What is said and not said helps create reveals so subtle that as a reader, you often want to reread a story to see the things you unconsciously understood but consciously skipped over while following the plot.
Personally, I have found Salinger very influential in helping me consolidate my own writing style. There is something about the way he writes that encourages experimentation with the medium, or at least it did in my case. In reading his stories
(Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut in particular uses mirror characters, memory, and a mother's projection onto her daughter to illustrate the internal world of main character Eloise) you are given a masterclass in narrative techniques, all of which slide gracefully under the radar as you read a seemingly simple story.
Salinger's other strength is in articulating the ordinary, gracing the everyday with a sense of connectedness. Children behave as adults, adults as children, and philosophical debate comes from both. In such a democratic forum, Salinger seems to suggest knowledge as universal, to be acknowledged or ignored as one sees fit. Such a unique take may be attributed to his religious readings; it may combine a traumatic military history with life experiences after battle, or it may simply be that he is a most extraordinary writer.
Whatever the case, Nine Stories is a standout in the history of short fiction. It is provocative, insightful and so intricately compiled that writers and readers continue to debate the messages held within more than fifty years after its initial release.
