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.