The Books: “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” (J.D. Salinger)

0316769517.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgDaily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters always makes me think of my main flame, because it was his favorite of Salinger’s. I always found that so interesting. But then, I found everything about him interesting. Here we are in the Glass family, Salinger’s eternal obsession. The family of precocious New York kids, all in the same family, all are artists or jugglers or Tao Buddhists … troubled, naturally. As any Salinger fan knows, Seymour Glass is the linchpin of all of these stories – the older brother who kills himself while on vacation with his wife in Florida. It is an event from which the family never recovers. He seemed to be the glue. He is the vortex. Everyone imitates him, and loves him, and he sets the tone of the entire family. Perfect Day for Bananafish, JD Salinger’s haunting short story about Seymour’s suicide, gets us closer to Seymour than ever before – in general, in the other stories, it is always through one of his siblings that we see him. He’s omnipresent, and remembered, but just not around. In Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, it is his brother Buddy Glass who is the narrator, and doing the remembering. He sits in a limousine on the day of Seymour’s wedding, a couple of years before his suicide – and Seymour actually is a no-show to his own wedding. Buddy finds himself in a limo with the Matron of Honor on the bride’s side and a couple of other family members from the bride’s side who do not know that Buddy Glass is not only related to Seymour, but his brother. They go OFF on Seymour, and many of them have never even met him yet. So he is as omnipresent and yet as invisible to them as he is to his own family. J.D. Salinger was working at something in his incessant dog-with-a-bone examination of the Glass family, and Seymour – and he really just lets himself be unleashed in Seymour: An Introduction (which I’ll get to when I get to).

The opening of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, with its reminiscence about a teenage Seymour reading an infant Franny a Tao story and what Buddy has taken from that – is just killer. It slashes at my heart. Seymour Glass committed suicide, leaving behind a void that will never be filled. It is the Glass family obsession … and we only see him through the eyes of other people (except in Bananafish, if I’m not mistaken). He takes on an almost mythological status, in the way that dead people often do. They haunt us. Especially if they left behind desolation and questions. For all intents and purposes it seems as though Seymour was the heart and intellect of the family (note his quote door that nobody seems able to take down. I have imitated Seymour in my own life – and always have a quote wall in whatever abode I live in …it’s just something I find comforting to do). The Glass family won’t recover. He’s a compass of some kind.

Here’s Buddy, trying to survive being trapped in the wrong limo on the day his brother Seymour didn’t show up for his own wedding.

I just love Salinger’s observations. And his italics. I adore his italics.


EXCERPT FROM Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger

I was staring, as I remember, directly in front of me, at the back of the driver’s neck, which was a relief map of boil scars, when suddenly my jump-seat mate addressed me: “I didn’t get a chance to ask you inside. How’s that darling mother of yours? Aren’t you Dickie Briganza?”

My tongue, at the time of the question, was curled back exploratively as far as the soft palate. I disentangled it, swallowed, and turned to her. She was fifty, or thereabouts, fashionably and tastefully dressed. She was wearing a very heavy pancake makeup. I answered no – that I wasn’t.

She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza’s boy. Around the mouth. I tried to show by my expression that it was a mistake anybody could make. Then I went on staring at the back of the driver’s neck. The car was silent. I glanced out of the window, for a change of scene.

“How do you like the Army?” Mrs. Silsburn asked. Abruptly, conversationally.

I had a brief coughing spell at that particular instant. When it was over, I turned to her with all available alacrity and said I’d made a lot of buddies. It was a little difficult for me to swivel in her direction, what with the encasement of adhesive tape around my diaphragm.

She nodded. “I think you’re all just wonderful,” she said, somewhat ambiguously. “Are you a friend of the bride’s or the groom’s?” she then asked, delicately getting down to brass tacks.

“Well, actually, I’m not exactly a friend of–”

“You’d better not say you’re a friend of the groom,” the Matron of Honor interrupted me, from the back of the car. “I’d like to get my hands on him for about two minutes. Just two minutes, that’s all.”

Mrs. Silsburn turned briefly – but completely – around to smile at the speaker. Then she faced front again. We made the round trip, in fact, almost in unison. Considering that Mrs. Silsburn had turned around for only an instant, the smile she had bestowed on the Matron of Honor was a kind of jump-seat masterpiece. It was vivid enough to express unlimited partisanship with all young people, all over the world, but most particularly with this spirited, outspoken local representative, to whom, perhaps, she had been little more than perfunctorily introduced, if at all.

“Bloodthirsty wench,” said a chuckling male voice. And Mrs. Silsburn and I turned around again. It was the Matron of Honor’s husband who had spoken up. He was seated directly behind me, at his wife’s left. He was seated directly behind me, at his wife’s left. He and I briefly exchanged that blank,uncomradely look which, possibly, in the crapulous year of 1942, only an officer and a private could exchange. A first lieutenant in the Signal Corps, he was wearing a very interesting Air Corps pilot’s cap – a visored hat with the metal frame removed from inside the crown, which usually conferred on the wearer a certain, presumably desired, intrepid look. In his case, however, the cap didn’t begin to fill the bill. It seemed to serve no other purpose than to make my own outsize, regulation headpiece feel rather like a clown’s hat that someone had nervously picked out of the incinerator. His face was sallow and, essentially, daunted-looking. He was perspiring with an almost incredible profusion – on his forehead, on his upper lip, and even at the end of his nose – to the point where a salt tablet might have been in order. “I’m married to the bloodthirstiest wench in six counties,” he said, addressing Mrs. Silsburn and giving another soft, public chuckle. In automatic deference to his rank, I very nearly chuckled right along with him – a short, inane, stranger’s and draftee’s chuckle that would clearly signify that I was with him and everyone else in the car, against no one.

“I mean it,” the Matron of Honor said. “Just two minutes – that’s all, brother. Oh, if I could just get my two little hands -”

“All right, now, take it easy, take it easy,” her husband said, still with apparently inexhaustible resources of connubial good humor. “Just take it easy. You’ll last longer.”

Mrs. Silsburn faced around toward the back of the car again, and favored the Matron of Honor with an all but canonized smile. “Did anyone see any of his people at the wedding?” she inquired softly, with just a little emphasis – no more than perfectly genteel – on the personal pronoun.

The Matron of Honor’s answer came with toxic volume: “No. They’re all out on the West Coast or someplace. I just wish I had.”

Her husband’s chuckle sounded again. “What wouldja done if you had, honey?” he asked – and winked indiscriminately at me.

“Well, I don’t know, but I’d’ve done something,” said the Matron of Honor. The chuckle at her left expanded in volume. “Well, I would have!” she insisted. “I’d’ve said something to them. I mean. My gosh.” She spoke with increasing aplomb, as though perceiving that, cued by her husband, the rest of us within earshot were finding something attractively forthright – spunky – about her sense of justice, however youthful or impractical it might be. “I don’t know what I’d have said to them. I probably would have just blabbered something idiotic. But my gosh. Honestly! I just can’t stand to see somebody get away with absolute murder. It makes my blood boil.” She suspended animation just long enough to be bolstered by a look of simulated empathy from Mrs. Silsburn. Mrs. Silsburn and I were now turned completely, supersociably, around in our jump seats. “I mean it,” the Matron of Honor said. “You can’t just barge through life hurting people’s feelings whenever you feel like it.”

“I’m afraid I know very little about the young man,” Mrs. Silsburn said, softly. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t even met him. The first I’d heard that Muriel was even engaged -”

Nobody’s met him,” the Matron of Honor said, rather explosively. “I haven’t even met him. We had two rehearsals, and both times Muriel’s poor father had to take his place, just because his crazy plane couldn’t take off. he was supposed to get a hop here last Tuesday night in some crazy Army plane, but it was snowing or something crazy in Colorado, or Arizona, or one of those crazy places, and he didn’t get in till one o’clock in the morning, last night. Then – at that insane hour – he calls Muriel on the phone from way out in Long Island or someplace and asks her to meet him in the lobby of some horrible hotel so they can talk.” The Matron of Honor shuddered eloquently. “And you know Muriel. She’s just darling enought o let anybody and his brother push her around. That’s what gripes me. It’s always those kind of people that get hurt in the end … Anyway, so she gets dressed and gets in a cab and sits in some horrible lobby talking with him till quarter to five in the morning.” The Matron of Honor released her grip on her gardenia bouquet long enough to raise two clenched fists above her lap. “Ooo, it makes me so mad!” she said.

“What hotel?” I asked the Matron of Honor. “Do you know?” I tried to make my voice sound casual, as though, possibly, my father might be in the hotel business and I took a certain understandable filial interest in where people stopped in New York. In reality, my question meant almost nothing. I was just thinking aloud, more or less. I’d been interested in the fact that my brother had asked his fiancee to meet him in a hotel lobby, rather than at his empty, available apartment. The morality of the invitation was by no means out of character, but it interested me, mildly, nonetheless.

I don’t know which hotel,” the Matron of Honor said irritably. “Just some hotel.” She stared at me. “Why?” she demanded. “Are you a friend of his?”

There was something distinctly intimidating about her stare. It seemed to come from a one-woman mob, separated only by time and chance from her knitting bag and a splendid view of the guillotine. I’ve been terrified of mobs, of any kind, all my life. “We were boys together,” I answered, all but unintelligibly.

“Well, lucky you!”

“Now, now,” said her husband.

“Well, I’m sorry,” the Matron of Honor said to him, but addressing all of us. “But you haven’t been in a room watching that poor kid cry her eyes out for a solid hour. It’s not funny – and don’t you forget it. I’ve heard about grooms getting cold feet, and all that. But you don’t do it at the last minute. I mean you don’t do it so that you’ll embarrass a lot of perfectly nice people half to death and almost break a kid’s spirit and everything! If he’d changed his mind, why didn’t he write to her and at least break it off like a gentleman, for goodness’ sake? Before all the damage was done.”

“All right, take it easy, just take it easy,” her husband said. His chuckle was still there, but it was sounding a trifle strained.

“Well, I mean it! Why couldn’t he write to her and just tell her, like a man, and prevent all this tragedy and everything?” She looked at me, abruptly. “Do you have any idea where he is, by any chance?” she demanded, with metal in her voice. “If you have boyhood friends, you should have some -”

“I just got into New York about two hours ago,” I said nervously. Not only the Matron of Honor but her husband and Mrs. Silsburn as well were now staring at me. “So far, I haven’t even had a chance to get to a phone.” At that point, as I remember, I had a coughing spell. It was genuine enough, but I must say I did very little to suppress it or shorten its duration.

“You had that cough looked at, soldier?” the Lieutenant asked me when I’d come out of it.

At that instant, I had another coughing spell – a perfectly genuine one, oddly enough. I was still turned a sort of half or quarter right in my jump seat, with my body averted just enough toward the front of the car to be able to cough with all due hygienic propriety.

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5 Responses to The Books: “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” (J.D. Salinger)

  1. DBW says:

    I am lured out into the open. Not saying on purpose, mind you.

    Love this book, although Seymour: An Introduction has always been my favorite. Just reading this excerpt primes me to read it ALL again. You are right in that Seymour kind of lurks and hangs over the proceedings in the stories of the Glass family(what a name–Glass: fragile but hard, transparent but a barrier, and so on. And then, you have Seymour–See More). I remember what a thrill, and surprise, it was to read A Perfect Day for Bananafish(which I read after reading all the other “Glass” stories), and see and hear Seymour’s actual thoughts and feelings–at least, a muted and cryptic version of his feelings. I predicted way back in 1974 that we would hear more about Seymour from Salinger, that he wouldn’t be able to let that character go, but I was wrong. I know that Catcher in the Rye is Salinger’s most popular work, and rightfully so, but some of the writing in Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction is singularly good, and it moves me in ways that Catcher never did.

  2. red says:

    What do you mean “lured out into the open”?? Like you haven’t commented on my site before? Like you’re not the famous “DBW”, one of my favorites out there? Come on now!!

    I may be foolish ( wouldn’t be the first time) but I still hold out hope as long as Salinger is alive that Seymour will come back. I believe that there is a manuscript somewhere – I mean, Seymour: An Introduction … an introduction!! He had more to say – he did – but to watch him in that story kind of spiral out of control (in the best way) and to be unable to keep going … it’s almost like his own parentheticals became ropes that bound and gagged him … Everything he writes has to be qualified with a parenthetical – until finally language itself loses its meaning. I found it so so hard and moving to read. It’s one of the most human pieces of literature I have ever read. Now I am probably confusing Buddy Glass with JD Salinger – and perhaps they are NOT one and the same … but I felt Salinger the writer in Seymour: An Introduction finally, after 60 pages, just throw up his hands and say, “You know what? No. Screw this. I’m not writing anymore.”

    But wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were more? If there exists a manuscript in that house of his that someday will come to light? I do like to imagine that.

    And I’m of the opinion that Catcher in the Rye, as great as it is, is the least of his work. Franny and Zooey (for me) is his masterpiece – with the short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut running a close second.

  3. Ted says:

    This book is in my top five favorite reads (and multiple reads) EVER. It sustained me in my early twenties – I lived on (off?) this book. I haven’t re-read it lately but I’ll put it on the summer re-read pile along with The Chosen, Middlemarch, and Magic Mountain. It’s funny, isn’t it, how stopping publishing has just made Salinger and his books into even more of a cult than they were before. I can’t think Salinger can be that naive of human nature not to have expected it and have taken some perverse pleasure in it. It’s like that discussion we had about Bob Dylan and what being an icon did to him and the ways he seemed to try to control how the opinions of others affect his artistry – they both want to create with freedom – but that would mean trying to stop themselves from again and stop the world from reacting… I wonder if his whole game has kept the wolves at bay and if he has continued writing? God I’d love to have another book with the Glasses- wouldn’t you?

  4. southernbosox says:

    This has always been my favorite Salinger. Thank you for writing about it. Especially today… Your line about the dead- “Especially if they left behind desolation and questions,” is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. This one goes to the top of my pile for the summer. Thanks Sheila-

  5. red says:

    Ted – it’s one of the dreams of my life that another book will come from him in my lifetime. It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility!!

    Love the comparison with Dylan. Very apt, I think.

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