User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
In retrospect it's a great shame The Carpenters missed their golden opportunity to release a single called "Raise High the Roof Beam".
Rating: really liked it
When a panoramic awareness of the real face of the world first hits you, it’s paralyzing.
If you manage to find your footing again, it’s - more and more bearably - only a hard struggle; though it gets worse before it gets better. And if you find real, solid happiness in your life after all that, it’s the beginning of your journey’s end, and a Real Blessing - “a crown upon your life’s work.”
For Nature made supreme happiness our natural human goal.
This little review is only about Seymour, and not the other bright Glass kids...
Seymour is trapped right the outset of that first phase. Like Dante was, in a Dark Wood. For him, panoramic awareness is a curse. And that it in fact is - until you can turn it into a blessing.
But the blessing is stillborn in Seymour, because he buries the curse.
And the Curse - which happened right at the very beginning of things - is the lot of ALL of us whether we know it or not.
Seymour chooses to run away from it! Big mistake... For once the ghost is seen, it will haunt him forever. Until it has been blessed and laid to rest.
And the way it haunts him is all in one word:
Depression.
He says to a little kid playing nearby - Try not to see so clearly! Like he always disconnects his own heightened awareness. But real life is nothing if not a struggle, and that struggle begins with the heightening of awareness. Giving in to Depression, though, is wanting to curl up and die.
Even when God is calling our name!
It’s like it was for Roquentin in Sartre’s Nausea - resistance is futile, the mediocre Shadows say to him on that murky side of life. Or like the inscription says over Dante’s Hell. ‘Give up hope if you come here!’
The Shadows lie.
Hope is the only key to the lock, so use it before night falls - and keep on hoping ever afterwards!
As Paul says, we are saved by Hope. Which is not to say Seymour will not be saved, for hope springs Eternal in the reader who has faith to see such things.
But in the meantime...
Life hurts.
A lot.
Poor, poor Seymour.
If Seymour had a chance to have that hurt assuaged by Love, perhaps he could keep up the struggle.
But then - none of us knows What Dreams May Come.
Though that ignorance is itself partially a Blessing.
Rating: really liked it
I think that with this book I finished reading about the Glass family, and I’m not going to lie, that knowledge makes me want to go outside, lay on the ground, and wait for the earth to take me.
Or at the very least reread Franny and Zooey, and then reread Nine Stories, and then reread this, in an unending loop until eventually I get sick of them and then can go on with my life unemotionally.
(I don’t think I could ever get sick of them but it’s an optimistic thought.)
I would have loved these stories of this family no matter what, I think - I mean, it’s hardly a unique trait to be an English major with a fondness for Franny and Zooey - it’s referenced in Caroline Kepnes’ You, for god’s sake - maybe I’ll just make this entire review a series of clauses bracketed by dashes until everyone unfollows me - but I was extra destined to love them, because I read them alongside one of my favorite people. I will always have affection for this family and these stories and Salinger, and more so because of the wonderful memories I have of reading them, and the time in my life when I was doing so.
AND THAT MAKES IT EXTRA SAD THAT NOW I’M DONE.
My heart actually hurts.
I love this family so much, and I love their stories, and these two additions are equally as lovely.
The first story,
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, is a top to bottom delight. (Also, in the interest of full discretion: until I actually opened this book I did not realize that the title was two separate story titles. I have no excuse for this, considering Franny and Zooey is the exact same thing, but here we are.)
Seymour: An Introduction, counterintuitively, for me started out tiresome and got less and less so. Really in the end I caught myself thinking “oh, to be such a wonderful person that a story like this is written about you,” and the fact that Seymour is fictional seemed nearly beside the point.
The Glass family is very real to me.
Bottom line: What I wouldn’t give to go back to reading Franny and Zooey for the first time.
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there's not enough Salinger in the WORLD, honey!
review to come / between 4 and 4.5 stars
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i'm sad and i'm going to read Salinger until i feel better
Rating: really liked it
Raise High the Roof Beam, J.D. Salinger
Like many of the other Glass family stories, Raise High is narrated by Buddy Glass, the second of the Glass brothers. It describes Buddy's visit on Army leave (during World War II, in 1942) to attend the wedding of his brother Seymour to Muriel and tells of the aftermath when Seymour fails to show. The events set the stage for Seymour's suicide in 1948.
Seymour is described through the eyes of Buddy and through those of the would-be wedding's attendants. Included is the Matron of Honor, a loud and burly woman whom Buddy meets in a car leaving the site of the wedding. The other passengers (who include the Matron of Honor's husband Robert; Muriel's father's deaf-mute uncle; and a middle-aged woman named Helen Silsburn) spend most of the car ride unaware of Buddy's family relation to the missing groom.
عنوانها: «بالا بلندتر از هر بلند بالایی»؛ «تیرهای سقف را بالا بگذارید، نجاران و سیمور»؛ نویسنده: جروم دیوید (جی. دی.) سالینجر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز پانزدهم ماه ژوئن سال 2008میلادی
عنوان: بالا بلندتر از هر بلند بالایی؛ نویسنده: جروم دیوید (جی. دی.) سالینجر؛ مترجم: شیرین تعاونی (خالق)؛ تهران، نیلوفر، 1380، در 122ص؛ چاپ دوم 1381؛ چاپ سوم 1387؛ چاپ چهارم 1391؛ شابک 9644481739؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20م
عنوان: تیرهای سقف را بالا بگذارید، نجاران و سیمور؛ نویسنده: جروم دیوید (جی. دی.) سالینجر؛ مترجم: امید نیک فرجام؛ تهران، ققنوس، 1382؛ در 206ص؛ چاپ دوم 1382؛ چاپ سوم 1383؛ چاپ چهارم 1385؛ چاپ پنجم 1386؛ چاپ ششم 1388؛ چاپ هفتم 1390؛ چاپ هشتم 1393؛ شابک 9789643114206؛
تیرهای سقف را بالا بگذارید، نجاران و سیمور؛ عنوان کتابی از «جروم دیوید سلینجر» است؛ هر دو بخش از عنوان کتاب، اشاره به دو بخش متفاوت از شعری دارند، که در داستان نخست بیان میشود: «رفیعتر افرازید شاه تیر سقف را، که میآید داماد، چونان آرشی افراشته قد، بالابلندتر از هر بلندبالایی»؛ از برگردان بانو: شیرین تعاونی
در سال 1386هجری خورشیدی نیز این کتاب با عنوان «تیرهای سقف را بالا بگذارید نجاران و سیمور: پیشگفتار»، توسط جناب: «امید نیکفرجام» به فارسی برگردان، و توسط نشر ققنوس، چاپ شده است.؛ در سال 1380هجری خورشیدی، تنها داستان نخست مجموعه، با عنوان: «بالابلندتر از هر بلندبالایی»، با برگردان بانو «شیرین تعاونی»، توسط انتشارات نیلوفر منتشر شده است، که روایت روز عروسی «سیمور و موریل»، و ماجرای غیبت داماد در مراسم، از زبان «بادی گلَس» است.؛ «سالینجر» در این کتاب، به شخصیت «سیمور»، پسر بزرگ خانواده ی «گلَس»؛ برادر بزرگ «زویی و فرانی» میپردازند.؛ روایت از زبان «بادی»، برادر کوچکتر «سیمور» است.؛ تنهایی و انزواطلبی «سیمور»، یادآور تنهایی «سالینجر» است، و در: «پیشگفتار» به روشنی «سالینجر» در اینباره سخن میگویند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 30/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
when i find myself in times of trouble...i read another book by j.d. salinger😔😉
Rating: really liked it
"This is too grand to be said (so I’m just the man to say it), but I can’t be my brother’s brother for nothing, and I know – not always, but I know – there is no single thing I do that is more important than going into that awful Room 307. There isn’t one girl in there, including the Terrible Miss Zabel, who is not as much my sister as Boo Boo or Franny. They may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine. This thought manages to stun me: There’s no place I’d really rather got right now than into Room 307. Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong?
Just go to bed, now. Quickly. Quickly and slowly.” Yesterday I went to the public library after work to read. I sometimes like to read there because it is a way to be around other people and not be around other people. When I'm too socially anxious but too sad to just give up and be alone this is a good and helpful thing for me to do. I wrote about this in another review but I can't remember if it was one I ended up posting to goodreads. It is my life anyway. Open the pages and hope this time I'll fit. Anyway, I read Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction that I hadn't read since I was a teenager (the first time I was probably locked in my room while listening to The Cure). That hadn't been the plan (I'm currently reading more than a few other books). Maybe my mind was doing something good for me because I think it helped.
Did anyone else ever get a sad out of place feeling from the Glass family? From The Catcher in the Rye, also? Now I don't care at all about the wedding party and their totally self unaware presumptions on the brother of the bridegroom they announce as a despicable human being. I am not worried that I would be as they are. I guess my library trick isn't too far away from Buddy's leaping into a car full of strangers headed to some place he doesn't belong (the apartment of his sister-in-law's parents) because he is lonely. I'm not worried about that, though. It's like when I vow to stop talking this time absolutely for good and when I forget how wretched I feel for talking I start talking again kind of impermanent damage. Those kinds of awkward experiences can be forgotten about if you go to the movies or manage to take a nap. It feels like a different day. Buddy will not be stuck in that car forever. The stage play of the wedding after party will change into another memory. I wouldn't worry about not being good enough for them, now. Muriel learned, to her fiance Seymour's dismay, to disuse her natural vocabulary of "cute". I feel closer to her estrangement when her husband cannot speak in her language, or rather she cannot trust that he does or doesn't hear her when she doesn't know what she wants. But I wasn't worried about that either. Muriel is a stranger to me and I'm not worried. I'm not worried about tanned faces and asking for your husband's mail in a vacation hotel and is that all there is to life, and if that's all they want out of life is that all there is going to be of my life. I'm not that bothered about it, anymore. Seymour knows his brother Buddy enough to know that he would despise of Muriel's reason to live. This is closer but also not it. You can't sleep away this disconnection. My anxiety and sadness about the Glass family is that there will never be another Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Franny and Zooey. Buddy has Seymour always. He doesn't have Seymour any longer. Seymour killed himself. It was in another story. Seymour the genius and Seymour the best of them all. Seymour is the Glass sky ceiling. Seymour is the O-zone layer protection. I think about them like going into the world and you will never meet anyone you love as much. The last line in Seymour: An Introduction that I quote in the beginning of this review made me feel a lot better. I had forgotten all about that. If he meant it. I think he did. Will he continue to mean it? What if you don't have that family and you can never have that family because everyone else already has a Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Franny and Zooey?
This is what I had remembered about this book: Seymour the poet. Of all that stayed in my mind fingertips it was Seymour writing his haiku poems. I thought some times about how the Japanese masters didn't need to use italics. I remember thinking some low self esteem thing that I'd never be able to communicate without the visual stress. I wondered how it would feel to be happy when writing as Buddy was. I remember Buddy with his shield of defense against those who would argue against their authenticity, those haiku poems of Seymour's that were all double haikus. Since reading Nabokov's Speak, Memory I'm thinking a lot about his idea that it is all positional.
"The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members." Buddy writes that we only have three or four truly indispensable poets. He doesn't say which they are so no one could argue that he left so and so off. Four? Only four? I remembered how he wanted to tell the wedding party in "Raise high" that his brother could never have written a word and he would meet you with himself as the poetry. That's the positional. He is positioned in his family. It was a place anywhere else that wasn't helped. I envy Buddy for his ceiling of Seymour but it also makes me sad. Was he going to reach for anything else or would it always be the first family corner? I'm relieved that it isn't the sadness that I was afraid of having of not being good enough. Whatever he says about only four. He is a man missing his brother and he wishes that he was a man who came at you as himself as poetry.
How could I have forgotten the nine stitches? One of the women (I don't have the book with me and I have already forgotten her name) mentions that Seymour (she overhears Muriel's mother saying this) that Seymour hit Muriel and she had to get nine stitches. When they were on their child genius radio show they were on the child genius radio show with another little girl, chosen by Seymour himself, who was not to Buddy's mind all that brilliant but a fine singer. Seymour threw a rock at Charlotte Mayhew the fine singer who was good looking. She had to have nine stitches. He threw himself in the rock, is my feeling, helpless to another reaction for what he was feeling. I imagine the foot stamping delight in being on the show together, to be "on" for her, ended with the rock.
Another thing I don't care about that I imagine I probably did when I was younger was that radio program genius thing. Something about people being smarter than they should be at an age when I didn't feel up to the task of where I already was. Now I don't care about Franny feeling like she could fly. I used to jump off the tops of dressers when I was a little girl, flapping my arms in flight. No light bulb dust on my fingers. I flew when I kept believing that I could. It was a lonely feeling when Boo Boo longs to see Franny when she hears her on the radio. Someone was moved by her dreams. What was it like to have someone care about your dreams that way? That's a foreign feeling. It's kind of sad and I wish I had a rock.
Seymour left a poem before he dies about a man on a plane and across the aisle is a little girl. This little girl has a friend who is a doll. The girl turns her friend's face to look at the man.
I have this fear of not being seen, of having no response... It is an unsettling image this girl with her doll who stares. It would be bad enough to be looked at by the girl, or just the doll. The girl pointing the doll to look is upsetting. I hope that never happens to me in a wrong kind of a mood. I would have to do something to make me feel like it had never happened or it would bother my mind too much. I can see that upsetting someone like Seymour to have to write about it, if it happened or not (Buddy thinks it didn't and Boo Boo believes it did). The writing about it is making it happen and if that's the response... I wouldn't want to be Buddy even when he is helplessly happy in a sitting room with his fiance and her mother. There's something about both Buddy and Seymour that unsettled me. It's the precocious aspect that is rooted in someone very young with a promise of something that is going to happen. In For Esme, with Love and Squalor collection they both make friends with these girls. I always wondered what would happen if the pleasure wasn't in the surprise of hearing what you didn't expect to hear out of someone you didn't expect to hear it from. Seymour could be kinder, such as finding Muriel's mother brave to live in her small world without imagination, and he doesn't even mean it condescendingly to pity her. I wonder what would have happened to them if they didn't have a ceiling to meet up against? No expectation of company to expect to hear from? I hope Buddy meant it that he wanted to see those girls in his class room and find someone else to hear from that wasn't his family. It would be sad to live life like someone who stopped enjoying music past the age of seventeen. Nothing ever sounded good again, and they keep playing the same hits and each time the newness gets less. Oh yeah, I felt better because I hoped that holy ground could be found again in new experiences. That you don't have to feel sad like you can't be like family with all new people because you aren't new anymore.
I'll try to remember Seymour coming at people as a poem and those nine stitches this time because I feel helpless for the right reaction and the right words when I see something that makes me feel small. Why do I feel small? I guess I'll probably think about Muriel and Seymour together because there's a small feeling between them too. I'm a little creeped out that they would need each other's grace that way. It wasn't that way within the Glass family. At least not in the untouchable past, where they would never stop loving each other.
I looked at other reviews of this book a minute ago. I guess other people on goodreads didn't think about Seymour's poetry as much as I did. I wonder if that means that others didn't feel like throwing rocks at beauty too. I always felt ugly. If it was a game of rock, paper, scissors I'd be missing the paper and my pen would have been less mighty than my knife. I wonder if Seymour would have felt differently if he had had a Seymour like Buddy had him. Someone to look up to, maybe, so you could feel like at least someone knew what to say.
Rating: really liked it
There were times when I was reading this book that I wondered whether or not I should reconsider Salinger as my favorite author. I mean, these stories are all over the place... but then I realized why I love him so much. Salinger does not write "skim-worthy" sentences. I really feel like the depth of his writing cannot be grasped if a person is not reading them with the utmost concentration. His short stories (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and others I have read) seem, more or less, useless. In terms of a specific story, they are. But it's what a person
gains from them, the thoughts that are provoked, that is crucial. Additionally, Seymour, an Introduction, was basically Salinger rambling on aimlessly about his brother. But it really made me consider the depth of his love, the tragedy of his death, the words and thoughts that Buddy Glass used years after the death... it was provoking and I found that I dog-eared a number of corners because a specific sentence or paragraph really called to me. I greatly admire Salinger's writing and am glad I completed this book.
Rating: really liked it
Anyone who read my review of Salinger's "Nine Stories" knows I love this man's work to death. I've read and enjoyed "Catcher in the Rye" and "Franny and Zooey" a whole hell of a lot too. I picked this up with a heart filled with admiration and optimism. Well that optimism was dashed upon the rocks of Salinger's self-indulgence and apparent disregard for his readers.
This book compiles two short stories first published in the New Yorker and are the final two entries in Salinger's Glass family saga. "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters" focuses on Buddy Glass and his trip to his brother Seymour's wedding. "Seymour: an Introduction" again finds Buddy downstage center and is his way of coming to terms with his brother's memory through literature.
Like "Franny and Zooey" we are served up first a good story followed by a not so good story. However where "Zooey" was rambling and a tad unfocused it was at least a short story. "Seymour" on the other hand is a goddamned mess. It reads like the notes an author would take down before actually starting the job of composition. For every sentence of quality and clarity there seem to be pages upon pages of self-indulgent masturbation. This makes for an interminable and ultimately frustrating read.
It's starts off promisingly though. "Raise High the Roofbeams..." is a delight. It is a comically poignant trip into the past. Buddy Glass getting over a bout of pleurisy in the camp hospital must get to New York and be the only family member at his brother Seymour's wedding. What follows is typical Seymour not to mention Salinger. As usual the characters are so well observed and vividly presented we can practically smell them. There is the usual masterful blending of the serious and the comic. Salinger doesn't so much write a story as create a world that he allows us to visit for a spell.
The greatest reward of course is getting to spend a few more moments with a member of the Glass family. In reading over all of Salinger's writing in the last few months I've become almost as obsessed with reading about them as Salinger is writing about them. That's why I thought despite warnings that I could indeed read and enjoy "Seymour." However it's total disregard for it's readers enjoyment almost dispelled the warm glow I felt after reading "Raise High the Roofbeams..."
So unless you have absolutely nothing better to read or do and you are a completist avoid "Seymour" like grim death.
Rating: really liked it
If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writerJ.D. Salinger is one of those authors that can write about the ingredients of chicken noodle soup and make it interesting. I can't help but love everything this man writes. It's ecstatically poetic yet straight and to the point colloquial. I admit not much happens in these two stories but I enjoyed the heck out of them anyway. If you've only read The Catcher in the Rye and want more by Salinger, then you can't go wrong with this book. 4 out of 5.
Rating: really liked it
October 2009
So basically, I’m waiting for Salinger to die.
I don’t mean that maliciously. Really. I bear no ill will towards the man, and I’d wish him a long and pleasant life as a hermit, full of good health and completely lacking in the company of stupid humans--except, well, he’s already had his. The old man is ninety, slowly doddering his way to ninety-one. Hasn’t published in decades. No one’s seen him in years; he doesn’t even yell at those durn kids to get off his lawn because then people would know where he lives. Heck, he might have another ten years in him. Or he could die tomorrow, in which case this whole review would be really tasteless. So let me make this clear: I don’t
want Salinger to die. I’m just waiting for him to do so.
But I digress. Thing is, I never read Salinger before this year. Although I went through my own Angsty Teenager Phase back in high school, I somehow missed reading
The Catcher in the Rye--which I always confused with
Field of Dreams, for some reason, but whatever. Got to it over the summer, as a little diversion before picking up
Nine Stories;
Catcher was boring and disappointing, the stories were pretty good. Didn’t have high expectations for
Franny and Zooey or this one, but I figured they’d be quick reads--and anyway, there didn’t seem to be much point in only reading half of Salinger’s published work when he’s only written four books. And that, right there, is proof that I read Salinger for all the wrong reasons. I only picked up
Nine Stories out of genuine interest in, and curiosity for, Salinger’s work--the others I read (re: suffered through) out of curiosity about Salinger himself. Here’s this mad old recluse who hasn’t published anything in thirty years--I wonder what makes him so great? Man, Holden Caulfield is a whiny little shit; I bet his other stuff is complete crap, too; hey, I was right, no wonder he’s in hiding; &etc. If I had read these books purely out of interest in the stories, instead of a perverse fascination with Old Man J. D., perhaps I would’ve appreciated them more. Perhaps.
This brings me back to Salinger’s eventual death. Why do I bring this up? Simple: in my curiosity about Salinger and my interest in his reclusive, hermit-like, hasn’t-published-anything-since-the-Sixties existence, the reason I’m thinking about his completely natural and far-future demise is this: all of Salinger’s other stories will get published. Simple as that. Soon as the old man goes up to that big field of rye in the sky, his family will descend like vultures on his cell/cave/underground bunker, tear through every safe, and publish every scrap of work the man has written, but not published, since 1965. And the paranoid in me, the conspiracy theorist, believes that J. D. Salinger really does have a dozen or so safes full of sequels to
The Catcher in the Rye, as well as the complete family history of the Glass Family (with a thousand songs of praise to the near-messianic Seymour), and a host of other, unrelated stories.
Of course, this is the part of me that also suspects Harper Lee of having written a dozen other novels, locked away, never to be published with
To Kill a Mockingbird, but I’m probably right--about Salinger, at least. ‘Sides, a quick visit to the Wikipedia page shows he has about two dozen uncollected and/or unpublished stories floating around, in forgotten literary journals and anthologies, that will probably never see the light of bookstores, ever, until Salinger croaks.
And let’s face it: it would be interesting to see them. It would be nice to see
The Stories of J. D. Salinger, or
Salinger: The Collected Works, 1940 to 1965 and
1966 to 20--, or even
The Further Adventures of Holden Caulfield (ghost stories, boarding school mysteries, boarding school erotica, and so on) published, reviewed, read, etc. I probably wouldn’t read any of it, but it would look nice--and that, to me, seems to be the distinguishing characteristic of Salinger’s books: that they
look nice in their slim, bare, austere covers. The stories inside may be mostly mediocre and somewhat overrated (to me), but at least the books
look nice on a shelf. And a handsomely bound edition of
The Complete Works of J. D. Salinger would probably
look nice too.
But I digress, again--and I probably sound a bit pretentious there, thinking I can judge Salinger’s existing work. I don’t even
like his work; I’m clearly a crude and unsophisticated little turd, so who am I to say anything about the man? What a phoney. But whatever. When Salinger dies, in 2024, at the ripe old age of 105, perhaps I’ll have repented and learned to love his work like I clearly should. When that happens, I’ll be the first to read
Catcher in the Rye 2: Catch Harder.
Edit--1/28/2010: Salinger died last night. I wrote this review three months ago. You can't prove anything!
Rating: really liked it
Okay, I'll never be able to be partial when it comes to Salinger - merely stopping myself from raving is hard enough. However, these two novellas constitute for me (and I'm sure I'm far from alone in this) a mystical experience: they're part of what, to me, defines holiness. It's not easy, this sort of writing, no matter how deceptively it mimics a stream-of-consciousness rant: I am convinced Salinger toiled over every single word, so as to create this rambling sort of mantra. Schubert can be like that as well - he can throw so much beauty at you, he can meander endlessly all over the stave just because he can't let go, not yet, and that's why his String Quintet (also a religious experience for me, a sort of Horcrux) isn't as popular as it ought to be: many people just find him tiresome. But just as poor Schubert composed for no one at all, just to make his life a tiny bit more bearable, so did, in all likelihood, Salinger plunge into this often unbearable stream of words and saved himself another day. (And here comes the embarrassing part, which I cannot avoid: I spent nearly eighteen months translating this book into Greek; in the midst of working on the first novella, I suffered a psychotic attack and had to be hospitalized - and then I returned to the text almost a broken man, or one barely holding his brokenness together. I could never do it justice, of course, perhaps no one could, but still, this lovely, painfully lovely book, was a big part of the restorative process. You the man, Jerry, you the man.)
Rating: really liked it
Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason .
Rating: really liked it
Salinger is very, very high on the sentimental favorites list, which makes this difficult to assess objectively - so let's start with the easy half of this two-novella collection.
Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters is wonderful, and while it occasionally dips a little too deeply into the preciousness well (the same well that Salinger comes oh-so-close to drowning in in Franny and Zooey), it works, and, if you've read A Perfect Day for Bananafish, serves as a pretty chilling prequel to the entire Glass family saga. (And if you haven't read APDFB, what are you waiting for? It's only one of the best short stories ever, and Nine Stories as a whole is indispensable.)
As for Seymour: An Introduction, well... I'm not quite sure what to say. (A well-placed "hoo, boy..." might be appropriate here.) I feel like Salinger had this point gotten himself into a holding pattern where he only knows how to end stories with sudden epiphanies, and he gives us three, all somewhat bargain-basement: 1. Seymour is, for Buddy, something to be given away to the world, to those who never had him. Well, alright. 2. That a Zen approach to writing, where one merely writes without aiming, is the only true way of hitting a target. (In some ways this story, with its tiring constant appeals for our astonished approval at Salinger's erudition, could be seen as a direct example of this theory, but I won't bite.) 3. A re-warmed-over repackaging of the essential lesson of Zooey, that the students that Buddy despises are no less his siblings than Seymour, Boo Boo, Walt, et al. Reading this story, one entirely understands the arguments that Hapworth 16, 1924 was proof of a teetering mind finally gone mad.
But if Salinger's work is as embedded into your DNA as it's become for me, you forgive these flaws for much the same reason it'd be sour and nitpickish to criticize the letter of a friend during hard times - one knows how deeply Buddy must be hurting. It's just a shame that Salinger didn't take over in the third-person, and let poor Buddy take a day off from the task of constantly recounting Seymour.
Read this one after you read the other Glass family stories - these serve as an effective (albeit uneven) coda for the entire affair.
Rating: really liked it
116th book of 2021. Artist for this review is American painter Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937).
2nd reading. Salinger's fictional Glass family reside in another lifetime for me, in a previous long-lasting relationship, a time I was at university, and oddly, a family entwined with Cornwall. In my early-twenties I became a big Salinger fan and read all 4 of his novels and wondered why he hadn't written more. Penguin recommends a certain reading order for his books, one I didn't follow or know about, and there order is one I long set in stone myself for considering his corpus, and recommending it. Penguin and I both think this should be the final Salinger novel in the run of 4 (ignoring that one of them is a short story collection, not a novel). Like much of the Glass family stuff, this is narrated by Buddy Glass, who is quite transparently Salinger's alter-ego. And before we consider
The Catcher in the Rye as being apart from the other three books about the Glass family, Buddy Glass gives us a hint in
Seymour: An Introduction: 'Some people—
not close friends—have asked me whether a lot of Seymour didn't go into the young leading character of the one novel I've published.' So,
The Catcher in the Rye is also in the Glass' universe, a novel 'written' by Buddy Glass.
So after reading, or probably having read
The Catcher in the Rye travellers should pass by
Franny and Zooey to meet the youngest of the large Glass family. Then onto
Nine Stories/For Esmé—With Love and Squalor where we meet several more Glass family members here and there but above all read the short story "A Good Day for Bananafish" in which we see Seymour Glass (the eldest child) killing themselves after much allusion to the event in other Salinger books. This then puts the reader at the feet of Salinger's rather strangely titled 1955 book,
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour: An Introduction, which, as some trivia, is the actor Emma Stone's favourite book of all time.
"Fifth Avenue, New York City"
The book is comprised of two separate. . . novellas, at a push. The first is the superior (the same goes for Salinger's
Franny and Zooey, also two split stories) by quiet a long shot. I originally, on my first read, infatuated with J.D., gave this 5-stars but I've grown mean and dropped a star on account of the second story, "Seymour: An Introduction". The former story I remember almost as clear as I read it yesterday and enjoyed it just as much, reading it in a single sitting one night before going to sleep. Buddy takes us to 1942 for the story (6 years before Seymour's suicide) as he goes to his older brother's wedding. Despite this, Seymour does not feature once, physically, in the story. Instead, Buddy is late to the wedding and ends up in a taxi afterwards with a number of strangers where he finds out what happened at the wedding. One woman in the taxi is not a fan of Seymour. Salinger's forte has always been characters and everyone on the page of this strange, funny, sad, story
glows. The highlight is the touching explosion that comes from Buddy's mouth when he finally defends his brother from the women in the taxi, gossiping about stories they've heard about him. I'll leave the rest to J.D.
"The Rush Hour, New York City"
"Seymour: An Introduction", however, does not glow. Buddy's tone has lost some of the light humour of the former story and instead becomes imposing, neurotic whilst continuing to try and be funny. He addresses the reader frequently. The story is more of an internal monologue of Buddy's as he tries to come to terms with Seymour's suicide. Elements are moving as you'd expect but Salinger really damages the piece with the strange tone Buddy has, the boring interludes talking to the reader and frankly avoiding talking about Seymour (which I have no doubt is a plot device on J.D.'s front, the avoidance of the reality). Lots of people don't like it and say it's self-indulgent and awful; I wouldn't go that far but I think it's one of the weaker things he put to page. Perhaps the most realised line of the story and the one that identifies itself, '[Seymour was] the one person who was always much, much too large to fit on ordinary typewriter paper—any typewriter paper of mine, anyway.' In the end the story is about failing to write about someone beloved who has died, and in writing a story about failing to write about such a subject, Salinger has partially failed in doing so. Somehow its failing makes for a good ending to the Glass family, as if it says something about losing Seymour, which is at the heart of all of it, in a way; or else it makes a good ending as it makes us want to read them all again. Without realising I started this novel on the exact same date and finished it on the exact same date as I did 3 years prior.
Rating: really liked it
I'd give the first part 5 stars, but the second part didn't really do it for me. The neverending stream of consciousness which seems to go nowhere, the constant 'meta-text' (always very self-deprecating) and the long descriptions of mundane events (and the not-thorough-enough descriptions of actual 'juicy' bits) made it a tough read for me. After reading "franny", "zooey" and "raise high the roofbeam, carpenters" I fell in love with the Glass family (and especially with Seymour, through the eyes of his siblings), but when it came to actually reading about him through Buddy's account in "Seymour, an introduction" all my admiration died a painful death as I turned each page.
