Reference to:
A Perfect Day for Bananafish
A short story by J D Salinger
1948 The New Yorker
&
A Happy Death
A novel by Albert Camus
1971 (written 1936-8, translated and published posthumously)
http://centretruths.co.uk/fahdtu/A%20HAPPY%20DEATH.htm
​
and possibly
Nausea
A novel by John-Paul Sartre
1938, Librairie Gallimard
See also Piggy in the Mirror
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A Perfect Day for Bananafish
A Happy Death
Nausea
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There are suggestions of references to Albert Camus’s A Happy Death which includes the words ‘Hello Image’ from p20, the opening words of ‘M’.
P104 ‘They had not lived enough, never having lived at all’.
‘The World would continue in the warmth of her parted lips’
Zagreus appears to be inviting P Mersault (not the Meursault of The Outsider) to kill him by shooting him with a revolver, which he does. He puts a bit of metal in his head. The unique line ‘Suck on a gun’ appears to have been inspired by the paragraph below.
P5 .”When he felt the barrel against his temple, he did not turn away... He stepped back and fired... It was no longer Zagreus he saw now , only a huge bulging wound of brain, blood and bone.”
Suck on a gun:
“...waking completely, his mouth full of already bitter saliva, he would lick the gun barrel, sticking his tongue into it and sucking out an impossible happiness’
P32
Banafish itself has a reference to shooting in the head in the last paragraph.
JD Salinger
A Perfect Day for Bananafish
As well as the obvious reference to the fictional bananafish of the title, in the last para:
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“He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.”
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Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
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The putative author of the diary on which the book is based is Roquentin.
Wen he finally starts to understand what his existence does and does not mean, there are several pages where he discusses his existence as opposed to others; he theorises and talks to himself about the meaning of existence
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p190
Example of theorising and talking to himself:
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All of a sudden they existed and then, all of a sudden they no longer existed; existence has no memory; it retains nothing of what has disappeared; Existence everywhere, to infinity, superfluous, always and
everywhere...
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p191
'Tired and old, they went on existing, unwillingly and ungraciously, simply because they were too weak to die...'
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Bananafishbones, the song
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​
Curl into a ball like you have more fun
That would make it faster
Why do you do it, do you do it, do you act like you?
Why do you do it, do you act like you?
Don't fight, go red and blue and black and white and sell this, sell this
Or leave it senseless like a suck on a gun?
"Put a piece of metal in your head" you said
"Make you dead, make you hip-a, hip-a, hip-a, hip-a"
A palace of stones of your bananafishbones
I'd buy you a hundred years old
To celebrate our difference, theorise and talk yourself
Until you're tired and old
Disappear everywhere and watch me
Pull my lips apart
Exploit, inspire, encourage
Be responsible for this
I don't think, I don't think
I make use of all this time
Oh, kill me, kiss me once and then we'll throw it away
And then we'll throw it away
Curl into a ball like you have more fun
That would make it faster
Why do you do it, do you do it, do you act like you?
Why do you do it, do you act like you?
Don't fight, go red and blue and black and white and sell this sell this
Or leave it senseless like a suck on a gun?
"Put a piece of metal in your head" you said
"Make you dead, make you hip-a, hip-a, hip-a, hip-a"
I don't think, I don't think
I make use of all this time
Oh, kill me, kiss me once and then we'll throw it away
And then we'll throw it away
Tell me about the games you play
Oh, turn off the lights
And tell me about the games you play
Written by:
Robert Smith