Editors Reads Verdict
The most formally experimental of Salinger's published work — 'Seymour: An Introduction' is a sustained performance of a writer who cannot write the thing he most wants to write, and the performance itself becomes the subject.
What We Loved
- 'Raise High the Roof Beam' is among Salinger's most tightly constructed longer pieces
- 'Seymour: An Introduction' is a genuinely original formal experiment — a digression that is its own point
- The portrait of Seymour across both stories accumulates more than either achieves alone
- Buddy's voice is Salinger's most self-aware narrator — conscious of his own unreliability
Minor Drawbacks
- 'Seymour: An Introduction' demands patience with a narrator who is deliberately failing to arrive
- The Glass family mythology requires prior investment — cold readers will find this opaque
- The book's formal ambitions are occasionally more interesting to describe than to experience
Key Takeaways
- → The person who most matters to us may be the person we are least able to describe accurately
- → Obsessive love is a form of artistic paralysis as much as a form of devotion
- → Seymour's absence is more present in the Glass stories than his appearance ever was
- → The failure to complete a work can itself be a completed work
| Author | J.D. Salinger |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Back Bay Books |
| Pages | 248 |
| Published | January 28, 1963 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, American Literature, Short Fiction |
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction Review
This slim volume collects the last two works Salinger published — “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” in The New Yorker in 1955, and “Seymour: An Introduction” in 1959. Both stories are narrated by Buddy Glass, the second-oldest of the Glass siblings, who functions as Salinger’s most self-conscious surrogate: a writer trying to write about the brother he loved most, and finding it is the hardest thing he has ever attempted.
“Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” is the more traditionally successful of the two. Set on Seymour’s wedding day in 1942 — Seymour, we already know from “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” will kill himself in 1948 — the story follows Buddy as he ends up stranded in a taxi with Muriel’s furious relatives after Seymour fails to appear at the ceremony. The story’s comedy (Buddy trapped with a deaf-mute matron of honour and a furious Matron of Honour) is Salinger’s most sustained, and the counterpoint between the wedding party’s outrage and the diary excerpts Buddy reads from Seymour’s journal creates a doubleness that the story handles beautifully. We see Seymour through his own words and through others’ grievances simultaneously.
“Seymour: An Introduction” is the more significant and more demanding piece — the most formally experimental thing Salinger published, and one of the most unusual pieces in postwar American fiction. Buddy attempts to describe his brother for a hypothetical reader who has not yet met him, and he cannot do it. He digresses, apologises for the digressions, continues digressing, returns, digresses again. The story is structured as a series of approaches toward Seymour that never quite arrive, each approach generating another set of qualifications and asides. The ostensible subject is Seymour; the actual subject is Buddy’s paralysis before the task — the way that obsessive love makes the beloved impossible to represent.
The two stories together constitute Salinger’s most sustained meditation on the Glass family’s central tragedy: Seymour was the best of them, and he is gone, and nothing any of the remaining siblings do will fill the space he left. Buddy’s inability to describe his brother accurately is not a failure of technique but a truthful account of what grief does to the writer’s relation to his material.
Our rating: 4.1/5 — Demanding and rewarding by turns, most essential for readers already invested in the Glass family mythology.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction" about?
Two stories about Seymour Glass: 'Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,' narrated by Buddy on Seymour's wedding day when he fails to appear, and 'Seymour: An Introduction,' in which Buddy tries and fails to describe his brother. The second story is a meditation on the impossibility of capturing a person in language, and a portrait of obsessive love as a form of artistic blockage.
What are the key takeaways from "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction"?
The person who most matters to us may be the person we are least able to describe accurately Obsessive love is a form of artistic paralysis as much as a form of devotion Seymour's absence is more present in the Glass stories than his appearance ever was The failure to complete a work can itself be a completed work
Is "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction" worth reading?
The most formally experimental of Salinger's published work — 'Seymour: An Introduction' is a sustained performance of a writer who cannot write the thing he most wants to write, and the performance itself becomes the subject.
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