Many features in Salinger announce the advanced obsessional neurotic: the endlessly self-modifying phrases & sentences; the lists of objects slavered over like a miser over his hoarded faeces; the Zen-impregnated demand for renunciation & control; the shuddering away from dirt; the squeamish avoidance of the flesh & all its joys ... I could go on all day. In view of this, the bathroom is his natural temple: the one room in the house where the primal golden filth can be celebrated in secret & washed away in solemn ritual. And of course if I were a Jungian I could also point out the individuating roundness of the mandala-bidet, the Shadow left as a rim round the bath like the skin shed by the enantiodromically self-consuming serpent. I'm surprised, in a way, he ever gets out of the bath. Scottie B.