J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [88]
Salinger revised “The Bananafish” repeatedly. After adding the portion containing Muriel’s character, he resubmitted it to The New Yorker, where the story was assigned to Gus Lobrano for editing. The magazine again returned it. One can only assume that Salinger was once more called down to the magazine’s office for a conference. At least The New Yorker, unlike the slicks, was willing, in a process that lasted an entire year, to work in consultation with him and appeared to value not only his ability but also his opinion. Whatever bitterness accompanied these rejections and summonses to Maxwell’s and Lobrano’s offices, Salinger obliged. His career came first.
After numerous revisions, “Bananafish” was finally accepted in January 1948. By then he had renamed it “A Fine Day for Bananafish” and was once again contacted by the magazine, this time to discuss the story’s title. There was some confusion at The New Yorker on exactly how Bananafish should be spelled. Was it one word or two? In a letter to Gus Lobrano on January 22, Salinger explained that it should appear as one word because two words would make too much sense. Lobrano apparently accepted this logic, and when the story was published on January 31, 1948, the title had been adjusted to “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”
The effort involved in completing “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” demonstrates not only the intense cooperation between Salinger and The New Yorker’s editors, who consulted him over every detail, but also the extent to which Salinger sharpened the story. Since he worked on the piece for a whole year, we can be sure that he scrutinized each word, producing a level of precision that also prompts a humorous speculation: considering the enigmatic nature of the story’s final version, one can only sympathize with William Maxwell when imagining how incomprehensible the original version must have been.
From the opening lines of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” readers know exactly who Muriel Glass is. She is staid and complacent. She is also frivolous and self-indulgent. In the most obvious symbol of superficiality, Muriel, like so many Salinger characters, has an extraordinary devotion to her fingernails. The simple fact that she is alone in her hotel room while her husband is on the beach, as well as her choice of reading material—“Sex Is Fun—or Hell”—establishes her as confident and independent. Muriel is, as Salinger states, “a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing.”6
When Muriel does answer the phone, her mother is on the line and the women engage in a conversation that centers on Muriel’s husband, Seymour. Since returning home from the war, Seymour has not been the same. He has been acting increasingly irrationally. There is a strong suggestion that he has aimed his car at trees while driving, as well as references to seemingly small things—his aversion to the sun, his insistence upon playing the piano in the hotel lobby, and his fantasy of having gained a nonexistent tattoo while in the service. Although her mother is aghast at Seymour’s actions and probably disgusted about the marriage itself, Muriel is surprisingly accepting of her husband’s idiosyncrasies, disregarding any mention of Seymour’s problems in favor of superficial banter over fashion.
Down on the beach sits Seymour Glass, his pale, thin body cocooned within his bathrobe. He is talking to a child whose mother has sent her off to play while she herself consumes martinis. The little girl’s name is Sybil Carpenter, and her conversation with Seymour is as ordinary as it is intriguing. Sybil, though, is not a likable child. She is demanding, impatient, and given to jealousy. She is certainly not the insightful Mattie Gladwaller or the adorable Phoebe Caulfield. When Sybil brings up the subject of her rival, the young Sharon Lipschutz, Seymour quotes T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land in claiming the topic to be “mixing memory and desire.” Salinger’s use of this quote points to the