Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour - an Introduction

A haunting portrait of family tragedy from the acclaimed author of The Catcher in the Rye

''He was a great many things to a great many people while he lived, and virtually all things to his brothers and sisters in our somewhat outsized family. Surely he was all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our double-lensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience, our supercargo, and our one full poet...''

These two novellas, set seventeen years apart, are both concerned with Seymour Glass - the eldest son of J. D. Salinger''s fictional Glass family - as recalled by his closest brother, Buddy.

''The Glasses are one of the liveliest, funniest, most fully-realized families in all fiction'' The New York Times