‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ by J.D. Salinger

Of course I first came to Salinger’s stories via The Catcher in the Rye, but whereas I have long stopped teaching that novel (it feels worn down now – overfamiliarity, or are there weaknesses in its DNA?), the stories are still fresh and often edgy. ‘For Esmé – with Love and Squalor’ is a heartbreaker. In the same collection ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ always grips a class. It provides lots of opportunities for voices when I’m reading it, especially the little girl Sibyl as she responds to the young man’s strange story of the fish who eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the ‘banana hole’. The shocking ending needs careful preparation in advance.

First published in The New Yorker, January 1948. Collected in Nine Stories, Little Brown 1953, sometimes titled For Esmé – with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories