J.D. Salinger had an awful (amazing) Habit of re-using some of his character names, but if you read his works chronologically you have to realize that the stories aren’t based off of the same timeline, and don’t even necessarily relate to one another. My conspiracy theory requires that Salinger planned out some of his works over a 7-year period.
Basically: Seymour Glass as portrayed in “Bananafish” is actually Holden Caulfield.
[SPOILERS BELOW. Stop and read J.D. Salinger’s “Bananfish” and “This Sandwich has no Mayonnaise”]
Basis: Catcher in the Rye (1951) happens. We know Holden strongly looks up to his brother, and has a history of running off. We also know that Holden does not ‘get along well’ with most people.
Next in this storyline should be “This Sandwich has no Mayonnaise,” (1945) in which we learn that Holden’s brother is worried about him because he went missing, and that he hopes he decided to join the army and will ‘pop up’ sometime soon because his family (and especially his brother) is worried about him. The story ends with the following line,
Stop kidding around. Stop letting people think you’re Missing. Stop wearing my robe to the beach. Stop taking the shots on my side of the court. Stop whistling. Sit up to the table…
It is clear from both of these stories so far that Holden does not have a firm grasp on the adult world. Note also the “wearing my robe to the beach” line.
This story incidentally contains one of my favorite J.D. Salinger lines of all time,
“He’s only nineteen years old, my brother is, and the dope can’t reduce a thing to a humour, kill it off with a sarcasm, can’t do anything but listen hectically to the maladjusted little apparatus he wears for a heart. My missing-in-action brother.”
Clearly the Holden from these two stories has similar distaste for phoneys. At the same time, we see in Catcher in the Rye that Holden seems to begrudge smaller children like Phoebe more imagination than he does older people. The last sentence suggests that Holden’s brother really thinks that he is deployed.
Finally is “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948)
My theory is that Holden did join the army, but ran away from that like he does everything else, likely after hearing that his brother died in the war. He tried to be normal and integrate himself with society, but it obviously strains him and he lashes out harshly against the adult world, yet remains overly protective of “Phoebe”, i.e. the purity of youth, and is able to interact much more freely with children. He still clings tightly to his brother’s memories, which is why he goes out to the beach in his brother’s old robe and in fact refuses to take it off until far into the story, at which point he carefully folds it up and places it in the center of his towel. He made up the name “Seymour glass”, i.e. see more glass, as a dig at society’s inability to see through the looking glass, rather than the glass itself. Through the various events that unfold, Holden realizes that he can no longer go through life as a child and interact with children in the same way. We experience his pattern of compulsive lying and becoming easily offended. On his way up to his hotel room we see a very “Holden” interaction with an adult lady in the elevator,
“If you want to look at my feet, say so,” said the young man. “But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.”
But, being heavily rebuked by the lady, and realizing that his entire life would be nothing by holding on to the memories of his brother, war, and the family he ran away from, he resorts to killing himself.
So… that’s what I’d like to believe happens, my “conspiracy theory”. Holden ran away, joined the army, ran away from the army after hearing his brother was dead, tried living a normal life under an assumed name, and ultimately killed himself. Since Salinger constantly reworked a few of his characters which built upon a barely consistent history, it’s not insane to suggest that he decided to use Seymour Glass as a way of giving Holden’s life an ending.
