Books like raise high the roof beam, carpenters and seymour: an introduction
raise high the roof beam, carpenters and seymour: an introduction
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction is a single volume featuring two novellas by J. D. Salinger, which were previously published in The New Yorker: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955) and Seymour: An Introduction (1959). Little, Brown republished them in this anthology in 1963. It was the first time the novellas had appeared in book form. The book was the third best-selling novel in the United States in 1963, according to Publishers Weekly.
The story was originally published in the November 19, 1955, issue of The New Yorker.
Like many of the other Glass family stories, Raise High is narrated by Buddy Glass, the second of the Glass brothers. It describes Buddy's visit on Army leave (during World War II, in 1942) to attend the wedding of his brother Seymour to Muriel and tells of the aftermath when Seymour fails to show. The events set the stage for Seymour's suicide in 1948. Seymour is described through the eyes of Buddy and through those of the would-be wedding's attendants. Included is the Matron of Honor, a loud and burly woman whom Buddy meets in a car leaving the site of the wedding. The other passengers (who include the Matron of Honor's husband Robert; Muriel's father's deaf-mute uncle; and a middle-aged woman named Helen Silsburn) spend most of the car ride unaware of Buddy's family relation to the missing groom.
