Most of the literary types reading this will know that A Perfect Day for Bananafish is the first short story in J.D.Salinger’s Nine Stories. I first read this book as a girl, and it crept under my skin and latched on. It’s a sharp bit of writing that had me loving and then mourning the main character in just under sixteen pages. Not an easy feat. Oh, and Spoiler Alert.
Its appeal to a young misery chick in the making is obvious: Exposure to mankind’s uncensored brutality can permanently alter a person’s perception of his/her own species. Society then appears to be participating in an elaborate and pointless charade from which it never breaks character, for reasons that have become incomprehensible. Seymour is no longer “of the Body.” Is making a Star Trek reference in a literary synopsis too obscure? Keeping it. Hope you’re all sci-fi fans. Moving forward can be as impossible as going back, and the only choice left is to jump off this merry-go-round.
Dark, brooding young me fell madly in love with this story, and dark, brooding older me still is. Nine Stories will remain on my top twenty list of books, and a Perfect Day for Bananafish will always be one of my favorite short stories. I even drew a picture for this page. I never claimed to be an artist. At least not under my real name. Hey, Facebook!
This is why my major is writing, not art.
Bananafish Lover 