Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955). Content and Description

By the time “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” appeared in the November 19, 1955, issue of the New Yorker, Salinger had been funneling all his creative energy into the Glass family saga for two years. The New Yorker had published “Franny” six months earlier; the three stories to follow—“Zooey,” “Seymour: An Introduction,” and “Hapworth 16, 1924”—continued the trend. When Salinger ceased releasing his work to the public in the mid-1960s, he had not published anything other than Glass stories for more than a decade.

“Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” documents the wedding day of the eldest Glass sibling, Seymour, whose 1948 suicide was the subject of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” Some 13 years after the planned wedding, Seymour’s younger brother, the aspiring writer Buddy, recalls the events of June 4, 1942. Ironically, on this wedding day, no wedding takes place, for Seymour leaves his fiancee, Muriel Fedder, waiting at the altar.

The story focuses on Buddy’s misadventures in the hours after Seymour’s no-show. Unsure of what to do, Buddy joins a few members of the bride’s wedding party in a car headed back to the Fedders’ home. Thwarted by a parade and other trivial obstacles, they stop at Seymour’s vacant apartment, share a few strong drinks, and discover, via telephone, that Seymour and Muriel have eloped. When Buddy’s company leaves for the impromptu reception (sans bride and groom), Buddy passes out from drunken exhaustion.

The story’s central conflict occurs between Seymour’s champions—Buddy and, to a lesser degree, Boo, the eldest Glass sister—and his adversaries— the matron of honor and Mrs. Fedder, Muriel’s mother, both of whom find Seymour immature, insensitive, and possibly insane. The tension between the Glasses and Fedders calls attention to underlying conflicts Salinger explores throughout his works: spirituality versus materialism, the real versus the artificial, the interior versus the exterior self, intellectualism versus anti-intellectualism. Each of these conflicts underscores Salinger’s fascination with the presence—and possible transcendence—of alienation in the modern world.

Although four stories featuring Glass family members had appeared previously, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” marked a departure. Not only was it the story that introduced Buddy Glass, whom critics often call Salinger’s alter ego, but it was the first to include all the family members in a single narrative. Furthermore, it was the first story situating Seymour at the center of the family’s saga, a kind of absent presence, a sounding board for his siblings’ psyches. In a certain respect, through his diaries, notes, letters, and most important, his influence, Seymour continues to live long after he shoots himself.

Of all the Glass progeny, Buddy’s reverence for Seymour runs deepest, often bordering on deification. In this light, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” is a story of one man’s grail quest, his search for enlightenment and escape from a materialistic, artificial, exterior-oriented, and antiintellectual world. For Buddy, Seymour is the Holy Grail, a man with unique insight, which, because of Seymour’s suicide, remains forever out of reach.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. In another Glass family tale, “Zooey,” Buddy divulges his admiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, calling it his “Tom Sawyer.” Warren French, an accomplished Salinger scholar, has remarked that “‘Raise High’ is much more indebted to Gatsby than has been recognized” (J. D. Salinger, Revisited 101). Read Gatsby, paying particular attention to two similarities, the first between Buddy Glass and Nick Carraway, the second between Seymour Glass and Jay Gatsby. How is Buddy’s relationship with Seymour similar to Nick’s relationship with Gatsby? Do you recognize other affinities between Salinger’s story and Fitzgerald’s novel?

2. Discuss the significance of Charlotte Mayhew, the beautiful actress at whom Seymour threw a rock when both were children. What does this incident say about Seymour’s character? What, if anything, does it say about Salinger’s treatment of women?