Word: seymour
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Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour-An Introduction, by J. D. Salinger. Further doings in the steadily proliferating saga of the Glass family...
...Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour-An Introduction, Salinger...
Such a response from the public cannot come wholly from the author's reputation alone. Part of the appeal of the Glass stories lies in the series' consistency. Sensing a membership in the great cognoscenti, Salinger's readers can corroberate "fact" in Seymour from any of the previous books, in the same way that fans of the James Bond mysterics can describe their hero in every detail...
...himself, his sister, Gatsby, Eustasia Vye, Ring Lardner, and all youths who think themselves sensitive and oppressed. On the outside are parents, teachers, roommates, and adults in general. The exclusiveness of the Glass family is similar: creative people like professors and earnest students (exception is made, of course, for Seymour and Buddy), Mrs. Glass and all who slight super-intellegence in general and the Glasses in particular (like the wedding guests in Raise High) are in the out-group. The Glass children and their devotees are and the rest of the world is an audience-the "Fat Lady...
...provides amusement. But Salinger the phonyslayer is a bit of a fraud himself. For what are the Glasses but seven faces of the author, and his glorification of them is a triumph of egotism. Far from being amusing, the stories become instead a view into "a terrifying Narcissus pool." Seymour's suicide suggests the author's fear of the possibility of his own faults. "Did Seymour kill himself because he had married a phony... or because he was so happy and the Fat Lady's world was so wonderful?" asks Miss McCarthy. "Or because he had been lying, his author...