Word: seymour
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...Glass stories have all been reprinted from the New Yorker in book form, and Salinger, on the dust jacket of the latest offering, Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters (1955) and Seymour: an Introduction (1959), promises several more, which will no doubt be well received by the growing Salinger cult. The heroes of the saga, as everyone knows, are or were seven children (two are now dead), the offspring of a Jewish-Irish vaudeville team. Super-intellegent from birth, they started in rotation on a radio quiz kid show. Grown-ups now, they are spread far afield: Buddy teachers English...
Spirit of Seymour...
...Seymour's spirit pervades the life of all the extant Glasses. As the oldest child, he initiated them into Zen and other mystical religious cults, and guided them in the ways of discovering whatever is inadequate or phony in their fellows. Dead, he became their high priest or Guru: his letters and diary are sacred relics, his poems too holy to submit to the public piece-meal. His legacy of knowledge brings Franny to the verge of insanity, and saves Buddy constantly from despair...
Raise High is the account of Seymour's wartime wedding day, told as a memory by Buddy, complete with a treasured excerpt from his brother's diary. The prevalent key of the story is dullness and confusion, for the constant use of asides and unfamiliar terminology snows under the genuinely touching scene of Buddy's adventures in a limousine with a selection of the Salinger out-group...
...Seymour is a rambling description of the departed Guru by Buddy in a turgid, you-see-writing-in-the-making style, filled with such interjections as "I'm suddenly time-conscious. It's not yet midnight, and I'm playing with the idea of sliding to the floor and writing this from a supine position." The first story is an average New Yorker slice of life effort, the second a pretentious and unsuccessful attempt to play Gertrude Stein. Yet the book has been on the best seller list for some time...