Author: J.D. Salinger
Translator: Seungja Choe
Publisher: Munhak Dongne
359 pages.
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This books is written in Korean only. |
About This Book
In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass
floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures'
tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with
bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's
wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to
worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany
and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World
War II has undone him.
The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage.
Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the
materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others
(often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book
may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the
pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and
childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow
Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law
student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them
down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With
his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable
dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to
avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his
daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked
hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the
Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I
stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of
red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked
like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering
uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."
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