Nate sat down at the empty table, in the high school cafeteria, and began to eat his lunch. A girl and a boy came up to the table and asked if they could sit down. He nodded and they sat down across from him.
The girl turned to the boy. "Have you started Franny and Zooey yet?" she asked.
"Yeah," he replied. "I'm at the part where Franny faints. Hey, do you think she's a Bananafish?"
"Yes. She doesn't die from Bananafever like Seymour though. Her other brother, Zooey saves her."
"Wait, Seymour is her brother?"
"Oh, right. You haven't gotten that far yet, but yes he is. He was best friends with their other brother, Buddy. I think he gets Bananafever after Seymour's suicide."
"Really?"
"Yes. He becomes a hermit and writes about Seymour. He's obsessed with him."
"I think Teddy has Bananafever."
"He definitely does. In Seymour: An Introduction Buddy claims to have wrote it."
"Does Buddy die?"
"I don't know. Salinger stopped publishing his works."
"Did he think that publishing his works made him a prostitute writer, like D.B.?"
"Probably. Holden did hate D.B. for that, and Holden probably grows up to be J.D.
Salinger."
"He does."
"Well, I'm not quite sure. A lot of people think that The Catcher in The Rye was semi-
autobiographical, but no one knows for sure."
"Speaking of not knowing for sure, I can't figure out whether or not Holden Caulfield has Bananafever."
"I don't think he does. I think he's just rebellious and depressed."
"Okay. You know who else is a Bananafish?"
"Who?"
"The kid in Down at the Dingy."
"You're right. He's obsessed with trying to get a ride in the boat."
"He gets cured by getting offered a ride in the boat, but how does Franny get cured?"
"Well, although Zooey hates Seymour and Buddy, because he thinks they screwed up him and Franny, because, when they were teenagers and Franny and Zooey were little kids, by teaching them advanced religious concepts. Anyway, he realizes that Buddy and Seymour are the answer to saving Franny from Bananafever and the Jesus Prayer.
"He calls her, from another room in the house and pretends to be Buddy. Although she figures out that it's him, she finally starts listening to him, which she didn't do when he talked to her directly. Then he tells her some philosophy he got form Seymour."
"Okay. There's just one thing I can't understand. How did Zooey call Franny when they were in the same house?"
"This is the forty's. They have party lines, no caller ID, and probably only one phone per number."
"Good point. Was anyone listening in on them, like Mr. Ed often did."
"I don't know. We never find out, but I think that phone in Seymour and Buddy's room
is a private line."
"Is what happens to Sybil ever reveled? Like, since Zooey remembers philosophy he got from Seymour, does she remember what he told her on the beach?"
"No, we never find out. She might remember though, but she was probably too young."
"Oh, okay."
A silence fell between them. Nate broke it. "What is a Bananafish and Bananafever?" he asked.
They looked at him, surprise on their faces. He wondered if they had forgotten that he was there. People tended to do that. He was often invisible. It was really annoying.
The boy spoke up. "A Bananafish is a fish that swims into a hole that is full of Bananas. After eating the Bananas, he has gotten too big and he can't get out. Then he dies.
"This was invented by a Salinger character named Seymour Glass, who had Bananafever. We have come up with two theories on what it is."
"The first one is that the Bananafish is a person and that Bananas are related ideas and the hole is obsession," the girl explained. "If this is true, then a lot of Salinger characters have Bananafever.
"The second one is that the Bananafish is a solider, the hole is war and the Bananas are people he killed. Although Seymour was a veteran, there was more to him than that. It was most likely the first one."
"Or it was both," the boy suggested.
"Interesting," Nate said, wondering if diagnosing Salinger characters with Bananafever
was giving them Bananafever.