Felt kind of meh about this one to be honest. I thought Franny and Zooey was pretty interesting, but these novellas (Carpenters and Seymour) kinda dragged on for me. I enjoyed the character descriptions when the author was remembering Seymour, but some of it got pretty rambley and I had difficulty following or caring. I was surprised because I looked forward to reading Seymour more than Carpenters, but I actually enjoyed Carpenters more as it had a clear story line and some “shenanigans” due to the brother of the runaway groom being stuck in a car with the bride’s guests. I love some good shenanigans!

Overall, worth a read but not my favorite.

Read 5/2011
Re-read 12/2015

Two stories from the "pen" of Salinger's Buddy Glass character. Like the rest of the Glass family (and most of Salinger's characters, full stop), Buddy is wildly over-educated and, as a result, seems to have a hard time relating authentically with much of anything. His eldest, deceased brother Seymour is the exception to this. Buddy spends a good deal of both of these stories trying—and failing hard—to emulate his brother's sainthood. "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters" is perhaps the better story here, but that might not even be fair, seeing as "Seymour: An Introduction" isn't a story so much as a highly-stylized series of diary entries by Buddy. That said, Salinger inhabits his characters so, so richly (Buddy seems to be the closest thing he's developed to an alter ego, much like Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout), and keeps surprising me as probably one of my favorite authors of the late 20th century. I'd not recommend this an introduction to Salinger's work, or, oddly enough, even to his character Seymour. For that, I'd start with "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," then Franny & Zooey.

Though quite the many differences between them, each of these two novellas were a joy to read. Having only read “Catcher in the Rye” and the “Bananafish” short story prior, I was not well-informed on the Glass family, but both stories make me want to read the rest of what Buddy Glass has to say. Salinger’s narrator/author-insert was oddly comedic in his descriptions of the characters he found himself saddled with in “Raise High,” and his beautiful ode to the bygone Seymour—albeit boundedly overflown with run-on sentences and made-up words, much like this sentence here—felt all the while very real and tragic.

Thus ends my poor impression of Buddy’s writing style.

"I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience" (105).

Finished this poignant wee literary romp on the train in Scotland today. <3

If you liked Franny and Zooey, you will also like this (albeit, a bit less).

Salinger offers a glimpse into eulogy, loving well, and what it means to be a poet.

"Poetry, surely, is a crisis, perhaps the only actionable one we can call our own" (131).

Recommended by a friend-crush ages ago, and I finally followed through. Very worthwhile.

"I have scars on my hands from touching certain people... Certain heads, certain colors and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too... Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy" (75-76).

I liked the first story gave up on the second. Too Much rambling

(4.5)