The action of the story then moves to the beach. A young child named Sybil Carpenter is on the beach with her mother. The mother lets Sybil run off and play while she heads up to the hotel to have a cocktail with a friend. Sybil runs down the beach to find “see more glass”.
Seymour Glass is revealed to be a pale young man wearing a terry cloth robe and lying on the beach. Sybil asks him where the lady is. Seymour replies that Muriel is “At the hairdresser’s. Having her hair dyed mink.” The two have a discussion about Sharon Lipschutz, another little girl who Seymour had let sit on the piano bench while he played in the Ocean Room at the hotel.
Then Seymour and Sybil go into the water. Seymour has an inflatable raft, and when the water gets up to Sybil’s waist, he put her on the raft, on her stomach. Seymour tells Sybil about bananafish: “they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas. “ Seymour explains that after they eat so many bananas, they can’t get out of the hole. They get banana fever and die.
I think, the song is derived from this story:
The action of the story then moves to the beach. A young child named Sybil Carpenter is on the beach with her mother. The mother lets Sybil run off and play while she heads up to the hotel to have a cocktail with a friend. Sybil runs down the beach to find “see more glass”.
Seymour Glass is revealed to be a pale young man wearing a terry cloth robe and lying on the beach. Sybil asks him where the lady is. Seymour replies that Muriel is “At the hairdresser’s. Having her hair dyed mink.” The two have a discussion about Sharon Lipschutz, another little girl who Seymour had let sit on the piano bench while he played in the Ocean Room at the hotel.
Then Seymour and Sybil go into the water. Seymour has an inflatable raft, and when the water gets up to Sybil’s waist, he put her on the raft, on her stomach. Seymour tells Sybil about bananafish: “they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas. “ Seymour explains that after they eat so many bananas, they can’t get out of the hole. They get banana fever and die.