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263 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 1953
鈥淢iss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,鈥� the young man said. 鈥淵ou just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.鈥�
鈥淚 don鈥檛 see any,鈥� Sybil said.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 understandable. Their habits are very peculiar. Very peculiar.鈥� He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. 鈥淭hey lead a very tragic life鈥︹€�
Eloise had left college in the middle of her sophomore year, in 1942, a week after she had been caught with a soldier in a closed elevator on the third floor of her residence hall. Mary Jane had left 鈥� same year, same class, almost the same month 鈥� to marry an aviation cadet stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, a lean, air-minded boy from Dill, Mississippi, who had spent two of the three months Mary Jane had been married to him in jail for stabbing an M.P.
The swinging door opened from the dining room and Boo Boo Tannenbaum, the lady of the house, came into the kitchen. She was a small, almost hipless girl of twenty-five, with styleless, colorless, brittle hair pushed back behind her ears, which were very large. She was dressed in knee-length jeans, a black turtleneck pullover, and socks and loafers. Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was 鈥� in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces 鈥� a stunning and final girl. She went directly to the refrigerator and opened it. As she peered inside, with her legs apart and her hands on her knees, she whistled, unmelodically, through her teeth, keeping time with a little uninhibited, pendulum action of her rear end.
鈥淣o, you know the reason I took a pot shot at it, Loretta says? She says I was temporarily insane. No kidding. From the shelling and all.鈥�
X threaded his fingers, once, through his dirty hair, then shielded his eyes against the light again. 鈥淵ou weren鈥檛 insane. You were simply doing your duty. You killed that pussycat in as manly a way as anybody could鈥檝e, under the circumstances.鈥�
Clay looked at him suspiciously. 鈥淲hat the hell are you talkin鈥� about?鈥�
鈥淭hat cat was a spy. You had to take a pot shot at it. It was a very clever German midget dressed up in a cheap fur coat. So there was absolutely nothing brutal, or cruel, or dirty, or even 鈥撯€�
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