Evening star., 1963-01-27

NCW XVI hSA a 4CW CASSA PJo
two parents and seven childrC
pieces soon become a part of
,ead. dissected. analyzed.
discussed. They become the
subject Of doctoral disserta-
ions, magazine articles and
lectures. The Glass family is
established as the worlds
eading example of together
ness, in comparison to which
;he Kennedys are estranged
10 the point of GOODNESS.
Then you publish a number
of the tales in a book called
Nine Stories," and later you
collect two more in another
'Franny and zooey." You
soyly promise your readers
some new Glass family
stories, but there seems to
be no rush, for the old stories
remain on every best-seller
list for a year. You have two
more reprints ready in book
form when the demand for
the earlier pieces slackens,
and on the jacket Of Raise
High the Roof Beam, Carpen-
ters and Seymour an Intro
duction" (first published in
1855 and 1859, respectively
you speak of the two stories
In that arch never-grow-up
dialect beloved Of your fans:
Whatever their differences
In mood or effect, they are
both very much concerned
with Seymour Glass, who is
the main character in my
still uncompleted series
about the Glass family. 1t
struck me that they had bet
ter be collected together, If
not deliberately paired off,
In something Of a hurry. If I
mean to avoid unduly or
undesirably close contact
with new material in the
series. There is only my word
for it, granted, but I have
several new Glass stories
coming along-waxing. dilat-
ing-each in its own way,
but / suspect the less said
about them, in mixed COM
pany, the better. Oddly, the
joys and satisfaction of work.
Ing on the Glass family Pc
culiarly increase and deepen
for me with the years. 1
can't say why, though. Not,
at least, outside. the casino
proper Of my fiction"
Both the present stories
are told by Buddy Glass, the
second eldest brother, spe-
officially identified as the liv-
ing j. d. Salinger by the
attribution to him Of author
ship Of Teddy" an earlier
Salinger story. Raise High"
recounts Seymour's wedding,
an event the groom could not
bring himself to attend, while
Seymour an Introduction"
the longest of all the stories,
is a highly self-conscious
attempt to re-create the soul
and body of Buddy's brother
who, ridden with sporadic
euphoria, committed suicide
at the age of thirty-one.
Highly self conscious
attempt" is not Just a criti-
cal opinion Of mine, but the
all too clearly considered
artistic predicament of Buddy
himself. Raise High" is the
last of the Glass stories in
which a situation or a state
Of mind is deftly caught in
the literary device Joyce
named an epiphany; the
later stories - Seymour an
Introduction" in particular
tend to fall to pieces when
the subject matter masters
the author, rather than the
author being in command of
his material. Salinger is no
longer writing the Glass
family chronicle-he himself
is swamped in 1t.
&R Rss
1t may be that a sense of
dead end. a realization that
the great change of style
since the days of "A Perfect
Day for Bananafish" and
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecti-
cut" has made any unified
history of the Glass family
an artistic impossibility, have
been the reason for Mr..
Salinger's continued silence,
not yet ominous, perhaps,
but remarkable.
Or>it may be that every
body In the Glass family is
afflicted with an incurable
infantilism. All of them talk
in accented syllables, af-
fected quotation marks, and
capitalized words. Seymour
and Buddy are both uni
versity professors Of English
literature. yet they write to
each other or about each
other In a sort Of intermi-
nable jargon that seems
nothing so much as sophisti-
Gated baby-talk. No matter
how old a Glass becomes, he
never grows up. never says
something unequivocally, and