Call number
FIC SAL
Collection
Genres
Series
Publication
Heinemann (1963), Edition: First Edition, 256 pages
Description
The last book-length work of fiction by J. D. Salinger published in his lifetime collects two novellas about "one of the liveliest, funniest, most fully realized families in all fiction" (New York Times). These two novellas, set seventeen years apart, are both concerned with Seymour Glass--the eldest son of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family--as recalled by his closest brother, Buddy. "He was a great many things to a great many people while he lived, and virtually all things to his brothers and sisters in our somewhat outsized family. Surely he was all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our double-lensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience, our supercargo, and our one full poet..."
User reviews
LibraryThing member nandadevi
One of the advantages of an eighth-grade education - the real stand out in fact - is that I was never invited to read a book with an aim of understanding what it was about - or at least to do so to the satisfaction of some curriculum or teacher no matter how well intentioned. So I might be a bit of
This is beautiful story telling. It is Bellow without the pity me, Donleavy without the labored wit, Joyce without the need to go to the moon and back, Nabokov without the darkness, Irving without the shallows. It doesn´t seem to me that this book needed to be any longer, or even that Salinger needed to write anything else. I get the sense that he cared less for the critics and customers than for the story, and once told that was, as they say, that. I wonder though, whether it would work as well - for me - if I had read this forty years ago. There a certain tiredness; jumbling together of memories reflections and feelings that resonates now as it would not have done then. Worth the wait.
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an oddity, coming to Salinger for the first time some forty years down the track, and particularly in taking him in the flank (as it were) having stumbled upon a copy of this particular book in an op-shop for the very persuasive price of two dollars.This is beautiful story telling. It is Bellow without the pity me, Donleavy without the labored wit, Joyce without the need to go to the moon and back, Nabokov without the darkness, Irving without the shallows. It doesn´t seem to me that this book needed to be any longer, or even that Salinger needed to write anything else. I get the sense that he cared less for the critics and customers than for the story, and once told that was, as they say, that. I wonder though, whether it would work as well - for me - if I had read this forty years ago. There a certain tiredness; jumbling together of memories reflections and feelings that resonates now as it would not have done then. Worth the wait.
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LibraryThing member erinjamieson
I loved Raised High a Roof beam, Carpenters. The characters were perfectly and poignantly illustrated. Every scene was perfectly described. This book does well to develop Buddy and Seymour's characters and is great in continuation with Franny and Zooey. Where Franny and Zooey seem to only find
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beauty in more complex forms, Seymour finds beauty in the simplest of things: housemaking, feet, etc. I did not like Seymour an Introduction as much. I prefer the crisp illustrative scenes and dialogue rather than a character's reflection when it comes to J.D Salinger's works. I think Seymour an Introduction is helpful though because it teaches you more about all the other works (including The Catcher and the Rye). If I re-read those novels (and I probably will), I'll be able to read them in a different light. Show Less
LibraryThing member DRFP
Salinger's prose is still excellent here but he mires Seymour: An Introduction in a mass of asides and irrelevant details. As a result the story is quite a slog to get through. S:AM felt very much like Zooey except even more obfuscated. It's an admirable piece of character fiction but not very
So, probably Salinger's weakest collection in my mind - still decent but very frustrating. Worth reading for completionists but best left till last.
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enjoyable. Raise High The Roof Beam is an easiesr piece to read but, whilst nice, I thought it liked any real bite.So, probably Salinger's weakest collection in my mind - still decent but very frustrating. Worth reading for completionists but best left till last.
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LibraryThing member DarthDeverell
While "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a good story, the second novella in this volume, "Seymour- An Introduction" is utterly pedantic, self-indulgent, and unnecessary. It adds very little to the narrative of the Glass family while retconning the final story from "Nine Stories" so that
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Buddy had written it. Interestingly, it posits a connection between the Glass Family and the Caulfield family (a Curtis Caulfield on pg. 193), but this largely goes nowhere. Overall, the Glass family and its stories reflect Salinger's later issues as described in David Shields and Shane Salerno's biography of the author. Show Less
LibraryThing member bwdiederich
Easily my favorite Salinger, Seymour in particular. Sad to lose him, the crazy bastard.
LibraryThing member Rabascaa
The author puts forward that the reader of this book is a bird-watcher. This is absolutely delightful and so is the story.
LibraryThing member cinesnail88
My final book is the last JD Salinger I've been meaning to read in order to have completed all his published works. It was The Glass Family, so of course I loved it, however,Seymour dragged on terribly at parts and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter only barely made up for Seymour's shortcomings.
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Salinger remains, in my mind, an author remembered for the wrong work. His Glass Family works far outshine the Caulfields. Only an opinion of course. Show Less
LibraryThing member SaraPrindiville
Both stories are a way of dealing with his brother's suicide 10 years earlier. Both also deal with the traits of writers and artistic people. The first one is a novella the second seems to be non-fiction. A rambling essay- both fascinating.
LibraryThing member xicanti
Two novellas that expand upon Salinger's popular Glass family. "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" deals with the day of Seymour's wedding, while "Seymour - An Introduction" is Buddy's stream-of-consciousness discussion of his dead brother.
I adore Salinger's writing for many, many reasons, but
Thematically, I find Salinger's work fascinating in that so much of it deals with dead brothers. I have a particular - and, admittedly, strange - fascination with the dead little brother in literature. It's a surprisingly common theme, (don't believe me? Just think about it for a bit), and one that Salinger works with in The Catcher in the Rye. Here, however, he is concerned with something similar but entirely different - namely, the dead older brother.
Though they deal with other things as well, all Salinger's Glass Family stories are influenced by Seymour's suicide. Anyone who's read Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey already knows what's happened and has seen some of the effects on the family. "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" instantly informs the uninitiated that Seymour has killed himself... then changes the game by rewinding and discussing an event in the past, when Seymour was very much alive. Though he himself makes no appearance in the story, we hear a great deal about him and cannot help but consider what we hear in light of his eventual death. The story is funny, emotional, and a true slice of human experience, but it becomes something potentially dark through our knowledge of Seymour's fate.
"Seymour - An Introduction" is much more raw. Salinger has pulled out all the stops this time around. We already know that Seymour has killed himself. Now we are invited to consider the effect his death has had on Buddy in a much more visceral way than was previously possible. Buddy tells us a great deal about Seymour without giving many concrete details. In fact, when he tries to give the reader anything substantial, he finds himself wandering off into tangents that illuminate his own character as much as Seymour's. It's a beautiful, engaging, and often frustrating look at literature, family, brotherhood and the self. There were moments when one of Salinger's images struck me so hard that I burst out laughing. There were moments when I thought I'd start sobbing wretchedly if I read another word. Like a previous reviewer, I feel that it adds a great deal to the wider Glass Family story... but I'm not sure I could return to it any time soon. I found it an emotionally draining read, but I wouldn't take it back for the world.
I highly recommend Salinger, but I'm not sure that these stories are really the best place to start. If you're new to his work, having somehow managed to avoid The Catcher in the Rye in high school and afterwards, I'd say Nine Stories is probably the best place to start. Save this one for last. It's beautiful, but it is probably the least accessible of Salinger's works.
I adore Salinger's writing for many, many reasons, but
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my love rests most firmly on two basic elements: voice and style. His stories brim with both. They've got this wonderful elegance to them, even as they flirt with colloquial language and common speech patterns. He does some truly beautiful things with dialogue and internal monologue; however, I did find it difficult, on occasion, to really get inside Buddy's head. With another author, I would have found this intensely frustrating, but with Salinger it's all part of the game. Those brief, wonderful moments where Buddy's whole character just opens up are more than worth the moments of reticence and stylistic cover up.Thematically, I find Salinger's work fascinating in that so much of it deals with dead brothers. I have a particular - and, admittedly, strange - fascination with the dead little brother in literature. It's a surprisingly common theme, (don't believe me? Just think about it for a bit), and one that Salinger works with in The Catcher in the Rye. Here, however, he is concerned with something similar but entirely different - namely, the dead older brother.
Though they deal with other things as well, all Salinger's Glass Family stories are influenced by Seymour's suicide. Anyone who's read Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey already knows what's happened and has seen some of the effects on the family. "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" instantly informs the uninitiated that Seymour has killed himself... then changes the game by rewinding and discussing an event in the past, when Seymour was very much alive. Though he himself makes no appearance in the story, we hear a great deal about him and cannot help but consider what we hear in light of his eventual death. The story is funny, emotional, and a true slice of human experience, but it becomes something potentially dark through our knowledge of Seymour's fate.
"Seymour - An Introduction" is much more raw. Salinger has pulled out all the stops this time around. We already know that Seymour has killed himself. Now we are invited to consider the effect his death has had on Buddy in a much more visceral way than was previously possible. Buddy tells us a great deal about Seymour without giving many concrete details. In fact, when he tries to give the reader anything substantial, he finds himself wandering off into tangents that illuminate his own character as much as Seymour's. It's a beautiful, engaging, and often frustrating look at literature, family, brotherhood and the self. There were moments when one of Salinger's images struck me so hard that I burst out laughing. There were moments when I thought I'd start sobbing wretchedly if I read another word. Like a previous reviewer, I feel that it adds a great deal to the wider Glass Family story... but I'm not sure I could return to it any time soon. I found it an emotionally draining read, but I wouldn't take it back for the world.
I highly recommend Salinger, but I'm not sure that these stories are really the best place to start. If you're new to his work, having somehow managed to avoid The Catcher in the Rye in high school and afterwards, I'd say Nine Stories is probably the best place to start. Save this one for last. It's beautiful, but it is probably the least accessible of Salinger's works.
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LibraryThing member shawnd
Roofbeams has to be Salinger's worst work, which might make it better than the bulk of American fiction writing from a technical perspective, but un-fulfilling when expectations are high. Another chapter in the Glass Family history, this almost exclusively features Seymour although he never makes
In the first novella, the story takes place entirely on the day of Seymour's wedding. It is a very sad story, so much so that no plot ending could save the tragedy. A short tale written from the perspective of Seymour's younger brother Buddy Glass -- it is set so that almost any description would spoil the story -- and his sorry, pique almost churlish engagement with some members of the bride's family during the events that day.
The second novella is a painfully long, slow slog through praise heaped upon praise for all three hundred sixty degrees of Seymour written by Buddy after Seymour's passing. It starts glacially slow, as if Salinger wants not to test us, but much more tortuously than that, wants to show how very slow writing could be if one wanted to evince it. It picks up pace consistently and when it ends it approaches real Salinger. Imagine a hero absolutely apologizing as he describes his brother, a Jesus-like superhero with off the charts ability to be amazing in any and every facet of life. Ten pages would be a teaser, twenty quite enough, but one hundred kills the soul.
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an appearance. This, in itself, might doom itself but if not then it certainly doesn't help it avoid being a panegyric.In the first novella, the story takes place entirely on the day of Seymour's wedding. It is a very sad story, so much so that no plot ending could save the tragedy. A short tale written from the perspective of Seymour's younger brother Buddy Glass -- it is set so that almost any description would spoil the story -- and his sorry, pique almost churlish engagement with some members of the bride's family during the events that day.
The second novella is a painfully long, slow slog through praise heaped upon praise for all three hundred sixty degrees of Seymour written by Buddy after Seymour's passing. It starts glacially slow, as if Salinger wants not to test us, but much more tortuously than that, wants to show how very slow writing could be if one wanted to evince it. It picks up pace consistently and when it ends it approaches real Salinger. Imagine a hero absolutely apologizing as he describes his brother, a Jesus-like superhero with off the charts ability to be amazing in any and every facet of life. Ten pages would be a teaser, twenty quite enough, but one hundred kills the soul.
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LibraryThing member bozon
My favorite of JD Salinger's
LibraryThing member bookworm12
I will readily admit that the reason I waited so long to read this one is because I hated the thought of no longer having a Salinger book to look forward to. I’ve read his other work and while I wasn’t a huge fan of The Catcher in the Rye (no more whining!); I adore his other books, Nine
I’ve always been fascinated by the fictional Glass family and at least part of the family is featured in both of those books and in Raise High. Salinger has a unique ability to make the mundane interesting. He sucks me in so quickly and the pages fly by. He usually writes about one short period of time, like Holden wandering around New York for a few days in Catcher. Throughout that time we see flashbacks and reference to things that have already happened.
Raise High works in the same way. The story is told from Buddy’s point-of-view. He is the second of seven children in the Glass family. The eldest is the poetic but troubled Seymour. Buddy finds out his older brother is about to get married and the rest of his family can’t make it to the last minute wedding. Buddy manages to get leave from his boot camp to head to New York City for the ceremony. Once he arrives he finds out Seymour has stood up his bride-to-be and Buddy ends up in a limo with the furious Matron-of-Honor and a few other guests of the bride. As the heat rises and a parade halts their progress across the city things become tense.
The other Glass siblings from eldest to youngest are, Boo Boo (girl), the twins Walt and Waker, Zooey (boy) and Franny. They are featured in various stories, but Seymour is the most captivating of the lot. His tale reaches its conclusion in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” one of the chapters in Nine Stories. Seymour is brilliant, but at times he becomes trapped inside his own head in a debilitating way.
Salinger adds small touches to his books that never seem to leave me. I remember reading Zooey for the first time and falling in love with the idea of covering your bedroom walls with quotes. In this book there’s a reference to the family’s tradition of leaving messages with soap slivers on the bathroom mirror as they were growing up. The title of the book actually comes from one such message left by Boo Boo for her brother. It’s a poem, “Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.” There’s also a sweet deaf mute man (the bride’s father’s uncle) who felt like he could have been my own family member.
There is something so real about the diary entries Buddy shares from Seymour’s journal. It feels as though we are given a glimpse into the struggle of a person we all might know. His shining optimistic exterior provides a glaze to a tumultuous underbelly of self-doubt and critical thinking which gives him no peace. It’s characters like Seymour, who we never completely know, that make Salinger’s books so captivating.
BOTTOM LINE: I loved it. Salinger gets inside my head and touches my emotions in a way that few authors can. Don’t judge his work purely by his most famous book. In my opinion his other work far outshines Catcher in the Rye.
“God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.”
“He would despise her for her marriage motives as I’ve put them down here. But are they despicable? In a way, they must be, but yet they seem to me so human-size and beautiful that I can’t think of them even now as I write this without feeling deeply, deeply moved.”
“Marriage partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each other, but above all, serve. Raise their children honorably, lovingly, and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected – never possessed, since he belongs to God.”
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Stories and Franny and Zooey. I’ve always been fascinated by the fictional Glass family and at least part of the family is featured in both of those books and in Raise High. Salinger has a unique ability to make the mundane interesting. He sucks me in so quickly and the pages fly by. He usually writes about one short period of time, like Holden wandering around New York for a few days in Catcher. Throughout that time we see flashbacks and reference to things that have already happened.
Raise High works in the same way. The story is told from Buddy’s point-of-view. He is the second of seven children in the Glass family. The eldest is the poetic but troubled Seymour. Buddy finds out his older brother is about to get married and the rest of his family can’t make it to the last minute wedding. Buddy manages to get leave from his boot camp to head to New York City for the ceremony. Once he arrives he finds out Seymour has stood up his bride-to-be and Buddy ends up in a limo with the furious Matron-of-Honor and a few other guests of the bride. As the heat rises and a parade halts their progress across the city things become tense.
The other Glass siblings from eldest to youngest are, Boo Boo (girl), the twins Walt and Waker, Zooey (boy) and Franny. They are featured in various stories, but Seymour is the most captivating of the lot. His tale reaches its conclusion in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” one of the chapters in Nine Stories. Seymour is brilliant, but at times he becomes trapped inside his own head in a debilitating way.
Salinger adds small touches to his books that never seem to leave me. I remember reading Zooey for the first time and falling in love with the idea of covering your bedroom walls with quotes. In this book there’s a reference to the family’s tradition of leaving messages with soap slivers on the bathroom mirror as they were growing up. The title of the book actually comes from one such message left by Boo Boo for her brother. It’s a poem, “Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.” There’s also a sweet deaf mute man (the bride’s father’s uncle) who felt like he could have been my own family member.
There is something so real about the diary entries Buddy shares from Seymour’s journal. It feels as though we are given a glimpse into the struggle of a person we all might know. His shining optimistic exterior provides a glaze to a tumultuous underbelly of self-doubt and critical thinking which gives him no peace. It’s characters like Seymour, who we never completely know, that make Salinger’s books so captivating.
BOTTOM LINE: I loved it. Salinger gets inside my head and touches my emotions in a way that few authors can. Don’t judge his work purely by his most famous book. In my opinion his other work far outshines Catcher in the Rye.
“God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.”
“He would despise her for her marriage motives as I’ve put them down here. But are they despicable? In a way, they must be, but yet they seem to me so human-size and beautiful that I can’t think of them even now as I write this without feeling deeply, deeply moved.”
“Marriage partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each other, but above all, serve. Raise their children honorably, lovingly, and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected – never possessed, since he belongs to God.”
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LibraryThing member Salmondaze
Crap. Absolute crap. The most insufferable member of the Glass family, Buddy, both narrates and anchors these two stories. His presence is unavoidable and he is absolutely a pretentious ass and a bore. At least in Salinger's last book, Buddy stayed out of the way to talk about the titular
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characters, Franny and Zooey. Here you have a narrated story of a completely innocuous wedding event and a rambling collection of reminiscences about the most mysterious Glass, Seymour. Unfortunately, Seymour makes a much stronger presence in the masterful short story, "A Perfect Day For Bananafish" (which I'd recommend along with the book Nine Stories, which shows Salinger on the decline but more near the beginning of it so it's not so bad). All in all, I cannot recommend this book to anybody but the airiest of blockheads. Nobody would find the supposed geniuses in this book to their liking in any capacity of the word. I give the book an extra half-star because it at least shows a little of Salinger's compositional acumen, but if you want to read Salinger, chuck this book and pick up The Catcher In The Rye for another read. This one's a lemon. Show Less
LibraryThing member xtien
Part one, the roof beam, is kind of in the same style as the Catcher in the Rye. Well written, good, fun, emotional. The second part, "Seymour, an Introduction", is very different. It's like an introduction to a book of poetry by Seymour, the elder brother of the "first person" in the book, that
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didn't get published nor ever will get published. Somehow you get the idea that it's autobiography, but I don't think it is, at least not all of it. This second part of the book is hard to read, by times, because of the length and complexity of the sentences - which always end up correctly - and partly because of the words Salinger is using. I needed a dictionary a couple of times. Still, I liked it very much. Almost as much as Catcher in the Rye. Show Less
LibraryThing member blanderson
Raise High was beautiful, a 4.5. Seymour: An Intro was bumbly in a charming way, still engrossing, but more a dramatic essay than a story (definitely the point). Sid by side they set up an intriguing contrast: one is all sparse narrative, the other a dramatic monologue with only intermittent
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scenes. Both, however, will linger with me. Seymour was, I think, less good, but it seemed an invaluable record of Salinger's struggles as an artist (a charming, bumbling manifesto). Show Less
LibraryThing member JuliaBoechat
“Franny has the measles, for one thing. Incidentally, did you hear her last week? She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apartment when she was four and no one was home. The new announcer is worse than Grant — if possible, even worse than Sullivan in the old
"If or when I do start going to an analyst, I hope to God he has the foresight to let a dermatologist sit in on the consultation. A hand specialist. I have scars on my hands from touching certain people... Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand. Oh God, if I'm anything by a clincal name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”
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days. He said she surely dreamt that she was able to fly. The baby stood her ground like an angel. She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the lightbulbs.”"If or when I do start going to an analyst, I hope to God he has the foresight to let a dermatologist sit in on the consultation. A hand specialist. I have scars on my hands from touching certain people... Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand. Oh God, if I'm anything by a clincal name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”
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LibraryThing member the_terrible_trivium
Two more stories of the Glass family. The first is good, standard Salinger. The second is Salinger jumping down a rabbit's hole of elliptical and digressive prose that's charming at first but quickly wears and never gets anywhere. Seymour is introduced but we avoid looking him in the eyes. Not the
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place to start. Show Less
LibraryThing member dbsovereign
Buddy Glass is a man like no other. Salinger takes on a ride through his own boyhood, throwing in some stream of consciousness and Zen. The second of the two stories is my favorite.
LibraryThing member charlie68
Another edition to add to the Glass family chronicles, touches on similar things as the other stories, with similar pathos and humor. Only for the Salinger fans.
LibraryThing member mahallett
VERY DISAPPOINTING
LibraryThing member starbox
Very much a book of two halves.
Having loved Salinger's other works, "Raise High" was another knockout novella. Narrator Buddy Glass arrives in New York on a hot afternoon to attend brother Seymour's wedding. As the groom fails to show and the guests drift off, he finds himself in a car with the
I was unable to get through more than a couple of pages of the latter. Utterly dense and unreadable (and I'll give most things a go)....I admitted defeat and abandoned it.
Having loved Salinger's other works, "Raise High" was another knockout novella. Narrator Buddy Glass arrives in New York on a hot afternoon to attend brother Seymour's wedding. As the groom fails to show and the guests drift off, he finds himself in a car with the
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irate matron of honor and others. Brilliant conversation and characterization. *5.I was unable to get through more than a couple of pages of the latter. Utterly dense and unreadable (and I'll give most things a go)....I admitted defeat and abandoned it.
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LibraryThing member francoisvigneault
Salinger at his best (Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters) and worst (Seymour: An Introduction).
LibraryThing member john.cooper
Two stories. The first (Roofbeams) struck me as a masterclass in narrative and characterization. An extended interaction between a small set of people, it's almost impossibly vivid; it reminds me of Raymond Carver, without the minimalism. What actually happens is not so important (although a
The second (Seymour), by contrast, seemed pointless and self-indulgent. Nothing important is revealed, and the narrator's (apparently) amphetamine-fueled, self-conscious logorrhea is irritating and then exhausting. It's all too typical for the writer/narrator to interrupt a sentence with an extended parenthetical aside about what led him to write the sentence and how he feels about the sentence and why he's going to write the sentence despite his misgivings about how it might be interpreted. This gets old in a hurry. I found it a struggle to get through.
If it weren't too pat an assumption based on too little data, I'd say Salinger had run out of gas ("Seymour" was his last published story before "Hapworth 16, 1924," which by most accounts was even worse). If the Salinger heirs ever get over their own neuroses and publish the last several decades of their father's work, we might get to test that out. But I'm not holding my breath.
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mystery is solved by the end). It's the kind of story I want to read again just to study the technique. Needless to say, I also enjoyed it immensely as a scene.The second (Seymour), by contrast, seemed pointless and self-indulgent. Nothing important is revealed, and the narrator's (apparently) amphetamine-fueled, self-conscious logorrhea is irritating and then exhausting. It's all too typical for the writer/narrator to interrupt a sentence with an extended parenthetical aside about what led him to write the sentence and how he feels about the sentence and why he's going to write the sentence despite his misgivings about how it might be interpreted. This gets old in a hurry. I found it a struggle to get through.
If it weren't too pat an assumption based on too little data, I'd say Salinger had run out of gas ("Seymour" was his last published story before "Hapworth 16, 1924," which by most accounts was even worse). If the Salinger heirs ever get over their own neuroses and publish the last several decades of their father's work, we might get to test that out. But I'm not holding my breath.
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LibraryThing member Cedric_Rose
Love love love love LOVE this book. The dramatic tension in Raise High... is incredible and I am constantly flabbergasted at Salinger's economy and pacing.
LibraryThing member adrianburke
First story great. Second story: wtf!
Awards
Pages
256
ISBN
0434670014 / 9780434670017