Word: bananafish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...upstate New York girl's college; Walker is a priest; Boo Boo a Westchester matron; Zooey a rising TV actor; and Franny a college student. The greatest of them all, however, was Seymour, who committed suicide on vacation in an earlier Salinger story, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish...
...what Salinger has evidently been trying to do for the past ten years is to justify writing stories with his peculiar style Zoocy was an attempt to legitimize Franny, and Seymour did its best to rescue A perfect Day for Bananafish. But the lasting impression is that Salinger has lost control of his style, and that the style is writing his stories...
...evolution of Seymour into this being of almost supersensory perception is one of the more fascinating parts of J. D. Salinger's history. Seymour first appeared in the limpid, shattering, 1948 short story, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, in which he goes swimming with a little girl on a Florida beach and, overcome by her innocence, swallows too much sublimity (or, one guesses later, too much despair). He returns to his hotel room, where his wife has been gabbling on the phone to her mother, and shoots himself through the head. Reasons for the cryptic suicide were suggested...