A Perfect Day for Hermit Crabs
Two days ago I drove past a store which has been an anchor of the neighborhood I live in for the last two decades. A sign on the door said that the proprietor, Greg Klaus, had died and the future of his store was unknown. It was a shocking revelation; I had bought a birthday present for my son there last month, and Greg was there puttering around his nice collection of eccentricities: Totoro stuffed animals, locally made cards and bags, peculiar tchotckes that embraced cuteness and darkness in the same package. And, upon doing the requisite Google search, I discovered that Greg had commit suicide.
That he died as a man in his prime was shock enough, but suicide is always so jarring. And then Salinger died, and I re-read “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” In it, Seymour Glass’s wife is assuring her mother on the phone that Seymour is not dangerous, that his nervous breakdown isn’t making him erratic. Meanwhile, Seymour is on the beach, talking with his most ardent admirer, Sybil Carpenter, a child with whom he clearly has an excellent rapport. He spins enchantingly surreal images for the girl, just the sort of tales that make a child love someone, about the elusive Bananafish, whose own insatiable appetite for bananas not only gives it its name, but brings on its demise.
And in a tender moment, Seymour kisses the arch on the girls foot, saying they’re done for the day.
“Goodbye,” said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.
Seymour walks back to his hotel room, has a terse, bizarre conversation with a hotel guest, and then blows his brains out on the bed next to his sleeping wife.
It is shocking. It is jarring. The complete ease with which Seymour converses with the child but the unease with which he communicates with the hotel guest expose the fractures that have surfaced in Seymour, presumably brought on by his unmentioned experiences in World War II. Seymour is capable of kindness and frivolity, but even within that is the seed of his tragic inner being: the Bananafish must, by its very nature, bring on its own end.
I read that Greg Klaus was similarly tortured. No-one but those closest to him knew what lived within, but his family was not surprised when he took his life. And Greg, filling his store with appealing hand-picked objects which embraced both his approachability and edginess, like ashtrays imprinted with cute children smoking cigarettes, hinted at a dark sensibility that would end badly.
Salinger’s ability to capture the dichotomy of Seymour’s appealing sensitivity and the unease with which Seymour lives within the world couldn’t be a better synthesis of the future that lurks beneath those trapped in the snare of their own anguish. Salinger didn’t die as Seymour or Greg did, by his own hand, but I imagine that to go to where Seymour went, he must have embraced the dark as well. Perhaps now Salinger can finally rest.
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Dear Q, I can imagine committing suicide, but not because of any dark and tragic beast lurking in a corner of my psyche–I think only someone who lives with the beast, caged or stunned or pulling at the chain could really know what that’s like. For me I could envision some eventuality where my life had just become a burden I don’t want to carry anymore–we’ve spoken of this before so don’t need to belabor it. But you’ve actually been there, long ago, and we both know that K. is fighting a demon that could ultimately win. The puzzling thing to outsiders like me is that I feel continuous wonder at the way life, the world, unfolds, reveals itself, and perpetual curiosity as to what will happen next-even bad stuff, seen from a more detached perspective, can be fascinating, a problem to be dealt with. But the real black hole, whirling around sucking us in, I don’t know that except from hearsay. I remember Frank Ludden, my art history father figure and guru, once responding to a question about van Gogh’s madness, saying that “His art came from the part of him that was sane.” In those so afflicted, this accounts for the simultaneous charm, the gift of connecting so wonderfully with children, and the secret devil hiding in another corner of one’s mind–looking on from outside, we see the gifts, the beauty, but how confusing it must be to know that one is both blessed and cursed in equal measure, with no apparent advantage given to either opponent. Life itself can be a battleground, but to have oneself be the battleground must be confusing, horrible. It ends apparently when one finally tears oneself apart. As usual, the peace belongs to the one who’s gone, the grief endures in those of us who remain. How can we judge this? Why should we? I don’t want to.
What I want to say to you, though, is how proud I am of how you’ve done battle with your own beast, how you’ve managed to keep it cowed, how you’ve let your wonderful gifts shine through so that everyone who really knows you admires, respects and loves you. Not least of them, your doting dad.
It was a strange thing when I was last truly in the grips when I told Lars that he had to help me. And I knew later, after realizing what was going on myself, that what he saw and what I felt were such completely polar opposites. He couldn’t understand what I was asking him to do, or what was wrong because it looked like I had won a lot of lotteries; there just wasn’t anything so wrong with our lives that I should need any help. “Help you do what?”
I was smart, funny, likable, sociable. Until of course I wasn’t. But there was no separating the two in his mind; there is of course only one wife standing in front of him. But the two people could not be less like.
If one could make physical what is in our heads, it would be like comparing apples with festering pustules of bile. It’s so unreal, and yet, in the grips, so completely unshakable.
I remember you told me with terror and confusion when I was about sixteen that I was like a black hole, and you were right. That’s all we are when we’re in the grip of our worst selves: just a roiling mass of dark matter sucking all life from the room.
I’m profoundly lucky to be of age in an era when there are some methods of managing, because I think I would be more like Salinger or Seymour if no methods were available. I always try to think of it like diabetes; I will deal with it my whole life, but if I’m careful it won’t get me in the end. Hopefully something completely pedestrian and pathetic like getting hit by a bus will suffice, though that seems a bit unlikely.