Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: an Introduction

This book, a pair of novella-length pieces (the fictitousness of which are just as dubious as their genre) by J.D. Salinger, is, though I am not in the habit of naming favourites, probably close to one of my preferred books of all time. This was the fifth time I've read it. In tribute to Salinger's dedication of the book to [any] "amateur reader still left in the world - or anybody who just reads and runs", and the general soul of the book itself, this post shall be especially lengthy, incoherent, verbose, and almost certainly more meaningful to me than you. How did I come across this book? Well, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a half-intelligent middle-class white male westerner post-1960 will, in the height of his teenage years, read The Catcher in the Rye, and I was no different. Needless to say, it filled me with depressive angst, yet I found Holden Caulfield so compelling a voice that I promptly sought out and read every other book that J.D. Salinger ever wrote (there were only three others, so this only took about a fortnight), and I found that these other books were, though in a similar vein, much more positive, life-affirming, generally excellent. This one most of all.

   Both are written in the voice of Buddy Glass, a quasi-fictional man whose outlooks and present circumstances bear marked similarities to the life of the actual author while he was writing (pronounced resemblances include a deep fascination with oriental philosophy and poetry, a world-weary hunger for sincerity and innocence and a despair in other people's failing to feed that need, and the author's/narrator's living as a recluse in the New York woods), though with familial and background details embellished somewhat so as to provide sufficient texture to write extensively of oneself without betraying many real facts thereof. This background includes the large erratic colourful Glass family, central among which (in these pieces of writing at least) is Buddy's elder brother Seymour, a character whom I am about as much in love with as it is possible for a heterosexual male to be enamoured with a fictional man. Though we do not actually physically meet Seymour in these works, through Buddy we are shown his spirit, we are pulled by the crook of the neck into the intimate incommunicable aspects of their brotherhood and told to drink in every speck of what the words can tell us and still know that those words can never tell us enough. The Glass family may be fictional but these are two of the most arrestingly honest pieces of writing you will ever read; and despite their apparent disparity in topic, style and measure, they complement each other perfectly if you lean into the heart of Buddy's memories of Seymour, as that is what they are both chiefly about. More specifically though? I suppose you deserve rough outlines, given that this blog is about the books I've read and not the non-existent poetic brothers I wish I knew.

   Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is a novella-length anecdote about Seymour's 1942 wedding to a woman called Muriel Fedder. It being the war and most of Buddy's family being inordinately scattered across various American entertainment-industry professions, he is told by his sister that he must attend, as he is the only immediate Glass relative available to do so. He does so, still hindered by the pleurisy that has left him on medical leave from the Army, reaches New York and sits through a service only to be caught up in the mass irritated confusion of a crowd of well-dressed strangers when it is realised that Seymour has bailed. Buddy and a small motley entourage (including the matron of honour and her husband, an obscure aunt named Helen Silsburn, and a short deaf-mute man in a top-hat who in his indefatigable silly sparkle is one of the story's highlights) are held up in a wedding car by a parade, and he suggests his nearby apartment as a rest-stop. Though mild resentment turns his way upon their learning his blood-relation to Muriel's scarpered almost-spouse, they comply. After reaching the apartment, Buddy finds himself further pressed into defending Seymour's character, and slips away to avoid awkward questions by offering to make drinks, necking accidentally-too-much scotch himself before he does so, and then chancing upon Seymour's diary. Fearing one of the spurned bride's friends finding it, he takes it into the bathroom and reads several of his enigmatic brother's recent entries (these are also a highlight - Seymour's voice is similar to Buddy's in tone but so much wiser, full of good sadness and jilted purity), before, really quite drunk, he finally remembers to make and serve drinks to his guests. The matron of honour has managed to phone ahead to the main party, and discovered that Seymour showed up secretly after all and has eloped with a surprised Muriel. Buddy, past all caring, sees them out and falls inebriatedly asleep on the sofa.

   Seymour: an Introduction is of similar length, but what kind of piece of writing it actually is I find hard to explain. Sort of potted character description (by Buddy of Seymour) though with extreme reluctance; sort of elucidation on what it means to be creative or wise or good; sort of discourse on the connections forged by interpersonal relationships and written words, the value and yet the insufficiency of reading or writing or being or knowing; sort of compilation of anecdotes from the Glass family's unusual past; sort of extended complaint about being an honest writer with a properly attuned aesthetic sense in a culture where literature is increasingly becoming overwhelmed by the simple, the easy, the cheap, the fake; sort of autobiographical truth-mingled-with-untruth (Buddy refers to other stories by J.D. Salinger that "he" has written); sort of sad and sort of joyous; both mournful and delightful in reminiscence and completely committed to lacking full clarity. It weaves and bobs and floats its linguistic form in a way that is conversational, frank, unpretentious; incredibly easy to read and in a way quite unlike anything else by anyone else. It is probably one of the best pieces of writing I know; it is, even on fifth reading, one of the only ones that can so fully flood my mind that no semi-conscious distraction can possibly meander its way into the foreground of my concentration, heart clenched all the while.

   Together these two short diamonds of the English word blur the lines between fact and fiction, between written and spoken, between personhood and characterhood, between memory and story, between anecdote and essay, in ways that would be extraordinarily complex to describe were I a literature student. Fortunately I am not one; the work is thrown lovingly into the arms of those who will take truths and enjoy goodnesses (be they in books or persons) as they come, and from this book I well-received much just so. It is not written to blur lines, that's just a happy fact of what happens when one writes as honestly as Salinger does.

   I will stop myself here. The virtues of this book far surpass what I could encompass in a blog post, much as those of Seymour are untrapped yet glorified by Buddy's efforts. Let me not begin to exorcise angels.
   I love this book immensely, almost too much even to recommend anyone else read it, as the fear that you won't be struck similarly weighs too heavily upon me - but if you do happen to encounter this book, treat it well. Think while you read, not intellectually but interpersonally, this is not a test, it is an introduction. Don't be clever, be friendly - and if that's an attitude you find it hard to muster as a reader, leave this book well alone, as you don't deserve it.