لحن، جملات معترضه و پرانتزها در داستان «سیمور: پیشگفتار» چنان به واقع‌نمایی داستان کمک کرده که آن اواسط به خودم آمدم که «سلینجر کو؟» فکر می‌کردم بادی گلسی آمریکایی، این‌ها را نوشته و سلینجر فقط کشف و منتشرشان کرده. و حقیقتا شخصیت‌پردازی سلینجر به‌قدری قوی است که باورم شده کالفیلدها و گلس‌ها واقعی‌اند؛ همان‌طور که خود سلینجر معتقد است.
به‌ترین توصیف درباره‌ی سیمور گلس و شش فرزند دیگر گلس‌ها را در این کتاب خواندم: سیمور قدیس است و آن شش خواهر و برادر دیگرش، حواریون او.

A Book of Two Stories: One Very Classic Salinger and One Very Not

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters is a short story by JD Salinger in very classic Salinger style—it has all of the alliteration, the vibes, lush backstory, abundant dialogue, and use of enclosed spaces.

Raise High centers on The Glass Family. During World War II, Buddy, at the behest of his sister Boo Boo, attends his brother Seymour’s wedding. Only there is a catch. Seymour is a no show to his own wedding! As the guests depart, Buddy hops into a nearly full cab. As the other wedding guests don’t recognize him, they begin to bad mouth Seymour.

Throughout Salinger’s published works on The Glass Family, there is constant mention of “It’s a Wise Child”, a radio program which propelled all of The Glass Children into fame.

“I said that from the time Seymour was ten years old, every summa-cum-laude Thinker and intellectual men’s-room attendant in the country has been having a go at him. I said it might be different if Seymour had just been some nasty little high-I.Q. showoff. I said he hadn’t ever been an exhibitionist. He went down to the broadcast every Wednesday night as though he were going to his own funeral.”

In many ways, The Glass Children are treated as though they are zoo creatures. The masses, with their faces mashed against the glass, catch glimpses of them, and are convinced that they “know” them. Is this autobiography for Salinger, with the masses trying to test his wits and attempt to outshine or outsmart him while he just wants to be a poet?

Seymour: An Introduction

What an ironic title! Because this is Seymour’s eulogy or rather his ending.

This story isn’t typical of Salinger. It is told in a stream of consciousness style with obnoxiously long paragraphs and doesn’t ring with that beautiful dialogue which is quintessential Salinger.

If you have ever seen an interview with Donna Tartt, that’s what this book was like—the ramblings of an intellectual.

However, this was Salinger’s last sanctioned published work, and it is essentially a send-off letter, explaining his writing philosophy. “When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion.” “Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?”

Of course, Salinger gets his nods into his great influences: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry David Thoreau. “I have a good idea though, that I haven’t been presenting a living portrait of the Sheik of Arabee.” On page 94 of The Great Gatsby includes some of the lyrics of the song, The Sheik of Arabee. “It was the height of the spring thaw, a beautiful sunny day, and I was feeling frankly, just a trifle Thoreauish (a real treat for me, because after thirteen years of country living I’m still a man who gauges bucolic distances by New York City blocks).” And I would like to think of Salinger writing away somewhere in his little cabin alongside Walden Pond where “a place has been prepared for each of us in his own mind.”“

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alzate l'architrave, carpentieri. lo sposo, simile ad ares sopraggiunge, il più alto fra tutti gli uomini.

la differenza col 111mo frammento di saffo, è che qui lo sposo non arriva. seymour - fratello dell'alter ego di salinger, lo scrittore buddy glass - molla la sposa all'altare, salvo fuggire poche ore dopo con lei, schivando cerimonia e festeggiamenti. è lui, geniale e scentrato fratello maggiore, il protagonista dei due lunghi racconti di questo volume. lui insieme a una pletora di personaggi indimenticabili (aspettavo da una vita di abbinare banalmente queste due parole) che sono le comparse attraverso cui JDS traccia la sinopia ironica della società americana del secondo dopoguerra. ed è anche per questo che alzate l'architrave eccetera è il modo per leggere un ottimo salinger quando la carta di identità impone di uscire dalla sfera di influenza del giovane holden.
perché il più celebre portatore di disturbo post traumatico da stress della letteratura americana in questo libro sistema non solo l'architrave dei racconti, ma anche i pilastri, gli stipiti e ogni elemento verticale necessario a reggerli. e quello che si coglie di autobiografico nelle vicende dei glass - le bislaccherie e i noti tratti caratteriali che erano anche quelli di JD - sono i riflessi che personalmente amo di più nella sua scrittura. la ruvidità che si veste di ironia nel cogliere i tic e i normalissimi dettagli propri e altrui. oltre a una dose cospicua di ossessioni e timidezza (misantropia?) che diventano il suo imprescindibile vizio di forma.
«verso i vent'anni attraversai un breve periodo durante il quale combattei una strenua battaglia, perduta in partenza, per diventare un individuo socievole che ama la compagnia». ecco jerome d. salinger, sono proprio contenta che non ti sia riuscito.

Seymour: Bir Giriş'i ne yaptıysam da okuyamadım. Ama Yükseltin Tavan Kirişini Ustalar tam bir şaheser.

یک داستان ساده و شیرین!
قسمتی از متن:
دختربچه فاشیست اعلام کرد که از خانه هایی که شکل هم هستند متنفر است؛البته منظورش خانه های متحدالشکل شهرکی بود. زویی گفت برعکس این خانه ها بسیار هم جالب هستند. گفت خیلی جالب است که آدم منزلش را اشتباه بگیرد. بعد هم شام را ندانسته با آدم های اشتباهی بخورد، توی تخت اشتباهی بخوابد، و صبح هم موقع خداحافظی همه را ببوسد به این خیال که خانواده خود آدم هستند. گفت حتی آرزو میکند که کاش تمام مردم دنیا عینا شکل همدیگر بودند، آنوقت، آدم هرکس را که میدید همه اش خیال میکرد زن خودش است یا مادر خودش یا پدر خودش، و آدمها همیشه هرجا که می رفتند دستشان را دور کمر همدیگر می انداختند و منظره 《خیلی جالبی》 می شد.

تا قبل از این که سیمور تقریبا غیرمستقیم وارد داستان بشود،کلافه شده بودم و حتی تو فکرم بود که بهش یک بدهم.هیچ اتفاق خاصی نمی افتاد و شخصیت ها همه تیپ های غلوشده ودوست نداشتنی ای بودند که خیلی بهترشان را صدجای دیگر دیدیم.اما از بعد آمدن سیمور...شخصیت سیمور دقیقا برعکس چیزی بود که تصور می کردم.آدمی نبود که الکی بگویند خاص است.سیمور یک آدم معمولی بود که چیزهایی که همه می بینیم را با عینک دیگری می دید.و اینقدر این دیدش قشنگ بود که خواننده را غافلگیر می کرد.
چهارستاره می دهم به سیمور و دید عجیبش.و بوبو هم خوب بود.بقیه ی شخصیتها را دوست نداشتم.
تکنیک با صابون روی آینه نوشتن هم کار جالبی بود.شاید امتحانش کنم.

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!

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.

This book consists of two novellas written by Salinger in the 1950s. Raise High the Roof Beam is a quite well-written story with a plot and excellent character development. The second, "Seymour: An Introduction," is incomprehensible to me. It's like a stream of consciousness that goes on for over 100 pages with no discernible aim. When I looked up reviews from the 1950s they had many of the same comments.

All this goes to show me, again, that even world-class writers strike out on occasion.

https://youtu.be/ac3hnysv9f4?si=HJCxI...

Raise High the Roofbeam is top 3 Salinger in my reading; Seymour: an Introduction is always a steep drop off that peak. These continually leave me wondering which side of the coin most of Salinger’s unpublished fiction landed on. Was it more Seymour and Hapworth or more genuinely empathetic fiction with his unique, ironic voice such as Raise High the Roofbeam and Zooey?

The mixture of points of view across Roofbeam was a real development for Salinger, and the transitions between the frame story, memory story, and Seymour’s diary entries are seamless. The letter from Boo Boo, the Taoist story Seymour reads Franny, and Seymour’s writings create divergent voices from Buddy Glass and the voices in the dialogue, a real achievement. The “Salinger voice” really does seem to be one that he imputes to Buddy, and it is refined to a perfect pitch here.

Thematically, Roofbeam is one of the finest works about brothers or siblings that I’ve ever read. It’s astonishing to realize how much of human relationships Salinger captured through imagination rather than the tendency towards autobiographical fiction that has become so prevalent.

"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.

These two stories couldn't be more different. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters was classic Salinger; whereas, Seymour an Introduction was... well, it was a slog to say the least.

Seymour felt like a first draft. A rambling internal monologue spewed out onto the page. Some might argue that that is precisely the point of it, but it simply didn't work for me. Reading it was like being at a family function, sat next to *that* relative who rambles on about nothing all night.