Subject: footnote
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Mon May 29 2000 - 04:03:07 GMT
It's not widely known that it was only through my own
personal intervention that Perfect Day became publishable
at all. I pleaded passionately with Salinger to remove some
of the sleazier sexual elements &, thank goodness, he finally
saw some sense.
Originally, the story was called A Perfect Day for Banana Feet.
It recounted, of course, the final day of Seymour Shoes
who, because of his overwhelming obsession with feet, has
remained unable after some years to consummate his marriage
with the lovely Muriel. For poor Seymour, life is dominated
by images of feet & toes. All day long, nothing but feet:
big, widely planted, stabilising feet; plump, motherly feet
squeezed into tight court shoes; the poignantly tortured feet
of ballerinas; the forbidden, malodourous feet of young men;
the fragrant, extremities of girls.
For Seymour, the climactic scene in all literature is the moment
when Crusoe finds the footprint in the sand. This underlies
one of his secret pastimes: observing the bare feet of swimmers
& collecting their ever more perfect imprints on the wet strand.
This is what he is doing when he enounters Sybil a rather
tiresome little girl who is, nonetheless, the possessor of
the most exquisite little tootsies. Playing her along, he is
presently enjoying an absolute feast - toes, insteps, ankles,
Seymour denies himself nothing.
Which pleasure is, naturally, followed by the most terrible,
despairing guilt. On his way back to the hotel, this guilt
assumes psychotic proportions & in what is now a fully
paranoid state he becomes convinced that through her innocent
glance a woman sharing his elevator is indicating her awareness
of his viciousness.
The final straw arrives when he observes that his sleeping wife
has been varnishing her fingernails. 'Always the same,' he says,
as he lifts the gun. 'The bitch. Always the fingers. Never
a thought for me. Never the toes. Never once. Not one lousy toe ...'
Scottie B.
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