Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - J. D. Salinger

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...