On this day in 1948, J. D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" was published in the New Yorker; in the same magazine, on the same day in 1953, Salinger's "Teddy" also appeared. These are the first and last selections in Nine Stories (1953), Salinger's only collection apart from various bootlegged editions of the other, forty-odd stories.
"Bananafish" introduces Seymour Glass, one of the many that Salinger would cast in the Holden mold and predicament. Here the parallel is quite specific, as Seymour finds himself not only married to a Sally-type but, just moments before his suicide, trapped in one of Holden's recurring nightmares of adulthood -- sharing an elevator with a phony ... FULL STORY »
