Stepping Into a Family That Made Me Rethink Quiet Genius
5 stars
When I read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, I felt as if I had been invited into a private room where every story carried a soft echo. J. D. Salinger writes with a closeness that made me feel more like a listener than a reader. Both novellas revolve around Seymour Glass, yet he appears mostly in absence, shadow, or memory. That distance stirred something in me. I found myself searching for him in every line, just as the characters do.
The first novella follows Buddy Glass during Seymour’s abandoned wedding day. The awkward carriage ride with guests who misunderstand Seymour left me tense. I felt Buddy’s loyalty pressing against their confusion. His voice is observant, careful, and at times surprisingly tender. As he sorts through the fragments of the day, I sensed how love for a sibling can be both grounding and painful. I …
When I read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, I felt as if I had been invited into a private room where every story carried a soft echo. J. D. Salinger writes with a closeness that made me feel more like a listener than a reader. Both novellas revolve around Seymour Glass, yet he appears mostly in absence, shadow, or memory. That distance stirred something in me. I found myself searching for him in every line, just as the characters do.
The first novella follows Buddy Glass during Seymour’s abandoned wedding day. The awkward carriage ride with guests who misunderstand Seymour left me tense. I felt Buddy’s loyalty pressing against their confusion. His voice is observant, careful, and at times surprisingly tender. As he sorts through the fragments of the day, I sensed how love for a sibling can be both grounding and painful. I caught myself feeling protective of Seymour, even though I had barely met him.
The second novella deepened that feeling. In Seymour: An Introduction, Buddy tries to capture who his brother truly was. The attempt feels raw, almost unfinished, and that vulnerability held my attention. Buddy circles around Seymour’s brilliance, humor, and strangeness, admitting how impossible it is to contain a person on paper. I recognized that struggle. Writing about someone you love is its own kind of exposure. As Buddy sifted through memories, notes, and impressions, I felt the weight of admiration mixed with grief.
What moved me most was the sense that Seymour’s complexity challenged everyone who knew him. He was gentle, intense, and unreachable in equal measure. Reading about him made me think about the people in my life who resist simple explanation. Salinger’s style, pared down but charged with feeling, carried me through both novellas with a steady pull.
By the time I closed the book, I felt a lingering quiet. The Glass family had drawn me in with their honesty and their fractures. The experience left me aware of how memory holds its own truth, shaped less by facts and more by the ache of wanting to understand someone fully, even when you know you never will.
