| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780316766944 | | Publisher: Back Bay Books | | Publish Date: 1/1/2001 | | Buy.com Sku: 30646840 | | Item#: RNSWRM | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 76897 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 7.75H x 5L x 0.75T | | Pages: 256 |
|
|
|
| | | | "One night some twenty years ago, during a siege of mumps in our enormous family, my youngest sister, Franny, was moved, crib and all, into the ostensibly germ-free room I shared with my eldest brother, Seymour..." (from the first line) "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour" are now reissued in a trade paper edition.
Annotation:
Two long short stories about Salinger's Glass family, previously published in The New Yorker. Both stories are about the life and tragic death of Seymour Glass, the eldest of the Glass children, and his siblings' reaction to it. The events are seen through the eyes of Seymour's brother Buddy, who is often said to be a portrait of Salinger himself. His rambling narrative is revealing of himself as well as of his brother, and explores the quest for enlightenment and wisdom that preoccupies both of them.
| PraiseNew York Times Book Review
"Hopelessly prolix, both of these stories are marred by the self-indulgence of a writer flirting with depths of wisdom, yet coy and embarrassed in his advances. With their cozy parentheses and clumsy footnotes, their careening mixture of Jewish vaudeville humor and Buddhist prescription, they betray a loss of creative discipline, a surrender to cherished mannerisms. And as the world of Salinger comes more fully into view, it seems increasingly open to critical attack. It is hard to believe in Seymour's saintliness, hard even to credit him as a fictional character, for we are barely able to see him at all behind the palpitations of Buddy's memory." - Irving Howe 4/7/63 |
| Author Bio| J. D. Salinger | | Jerome David Salinger grew up in New York City, the son of a Jewish father and a Scotch-Irish mother; his father sold cheese and smoked meats. It is said that the Marx Brothers used to drop by the Salinger apartment. At 17, Jerome David decided to become a writer. He attended private schools, never graduated from college, and served in the Army in World War II, an experience he wrote about, obliquely, in several short stories, most notably "For Esmé, With Love and Squalor". He began writing seriously during the war, but most of his early work was so mediocre he tried to keep it from being reprinted; out of dozens, he chose only nine stories for his first collection. Around 1948, however, Salinger began publishing in "The New Yorker", and his fiction improved dramatically, becoming the classic explorations of youth vs. hypocrisy ("phoniness") for which he became celebrated. Salinger has been married and divorced twice; his devotion to Zen Buddhism is evident in his later fiction. In 1952, he moved from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire, where he continues to live as a recluse on 99 acres at the top of a hill, with a view of five states. He has published nothing since 1965, though he apparently continues to write. Salinger has been called the most widely read and least prolific author in history; his reputation rests on one novel, two novellas, and a handful of short stories. |
| |
|
|
__USERID__
/prod/raise-high-the-roof-beam-carpenters-and-seymour-an-introduction/q/loc/106/30646840.html
|
