How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Story.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Then, suddenly, it struck me - and it was sheerly intuitive - that she might well be in secret possession of a motley number of biographical facts about Seymour; that is, the low, regrettably dramatic, and (in my opinion) basically misleading facts about him. That he'd been Billy Black, a national radio 'celebrity', for some six years of his boyhood. Or that, for another example, he'd been a freshman at Columbia when he'd just turned fifteen. ("Roof Beam" 2.49)
We find out later why these facts about Seymour are misleading. Buddy's tirade in his apartment reveals that Seymour in no way reveled in these abilities. Similarly, we find out in "Seymour: an Introduction" that Seymour didn't even like being the Glass family "champion talker."
Quote #2
The Matron of Honor seemed to reflect for a moment. "Well, nothing very much, really," she said. "I mean nothing small or really derogatory or anything like that. All she said, really, was that this Seymour, in her opinion, was a latent homosexual and that he was basically afraid of marriage. I mean she didn't say it nasty or anything. She just said it - you know - intelligently. I mean she was psychoanalyzed herself for years and years." ("Roof Beam" 2.87)
Psychoanalysis is discussed – mocked, in fact – in many of the other Glass family stories. Buddy makes it clear that Seymour was psychologically poked, prodded, and probed to no end as a child. Buddy perhaps even suggests that it is partly responsible for Seymour's problems as an adult.
Quote #3
"Do you know who I think you arc? I think you're this Seymour's brother." [The Matron of Honor] waited, very briefly, and, when I didn't say anything: "You look like him, from his crazy picture, and I happen to know that he was supposed to come to the wedding. His sister or somebody told Muriel." Her look was fixed unwaveringly on my face. "Are you?" she asked bluntly.
My voice must have sounded a trifle rented when I answered. "Yes," I said. My face was burning. In a way, though, I felt an infinitely less furry sense of self-identification than I had since I'd got off the train earlier in the afternoon. ("Roof Beam" 2.110-1)
Much of Buddy's identity in this story is wrapped up in his relationship to Seymour. Of course, all he is to the guests in the car is Seymour's brother. He seems to be entirely defined in terms of his relation to Seymour, both in "Roof Beam" and in "Seymour."
Quote #4
[The Matron of Honor]: "I'd die, in fact, before I'd let an child of mine turn themselves into a little exhibitionist before the public. It warps their whole entire lives. The publicity and all, if nothing else – ask any psychiatrist. I mean, how can you have any kind of normal childhood or anything?" ("Roof Beam" 3.14)
This is one of the issues raised in Salinger's Franny and Zooey, two stories about the youngest Glass family children. Zooey feels as though he's been deprived of a shot at a normal life – but interestingly, it has more to do with his over-education (at Seymour and Buddy's hands) than with his time on the radio. He does make the point, however, that he never really "got off the air," so to speak.
Quote #5
I read and reread the quotation, and then I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and opened Seymour's diary. ("Roof Beam" 3.28)
It's also fitting that Seymour communicates only through the written word – his diary in "Roof Beam" and his poetry in "Seymour."
Quote #6
I am a liar, of course. Charlotte never did understand why Seymour threw that stone at her. ("Roof Beam" 5.2)
We are led to believe that the Glass family all understood why Seymour threw the stone, yet Charlotte never did. The idea that the Glass family is too insular to be understood by an outsider is an issue raised in the other Glass family novel, Franny and Zooey.
Quote #7
On the other hand, in the earlier, much shorter story I did, back in the late forties, lie not only appeared in the flesh but walked, talked, went for a dip in the ocean, and fired a bullet through his brain in the last paragraph. However, several members of my immediate, if somewhat far-flung, family, who regularly pick over my published prose for small technical errors, have gently pointed out to me (much too damned gently, since they usually cone down on me like grammarians) that the young man, the "Seymour," who did the walking and talking in that early story, not to mention the shooting, was not Seymour at all but, oddly, someone with a striking resemblance to - alley oop, I'm afraid - myself. Which is true, I think, or true enough to make inc feel a craftsman's ping of reproof. And while there's no good excuse for that kind of faux pas, I can't forbear to mention that that particular story was written just a couple of months after Seymour's death, and not too very long after I myself, like both the "Seymour" in the story and the Seymour in Real Life, had returned from the European Theater of Operations. I was using a very poorly rehabilitated, not to say unbalanced, German typewriter at the tine. ("Seymour" 1.7)
This complicates our understanding both of Seymour and of Buddy. To know that Buddy wrote "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (the story referred to in this passage) is complicated in itself. But now we have to wonder how much of anything Buddy says about Seymour is misdirected self-reflection.
Quote #8
Used with moderation, a first-class verse is an excellent and usually fast-working form of heat therapy. Once, in the Army, when I had what might be termed ambulatory pleurisy for something over three months, my first real relief carne only when I had placed a perfectly innocent-looking Blake lyric in my shirt pocket and worn it like a poultice for a day or so. Extremes, though, arc always risky and ordinarily downright baneful, and the dangers of prolonged contact with any poetry that seems to exceed what we most familiarly know of the first-class are formidable. In any case, I'd be relieved to see my brother's poems moved out of this general small area, at least for a while. I feel mildly but extensively burned. ("Seymour" 1.10)
This connects Seymour and Buddy in two ways. First, it sends us back to the opening of "Roof Beam" when Buddy recalls Seymour using prose as a pacifier for Franny. Second, it reminds us of what Seymour had to say about getting scars on his hands from touching certain people. As Seymour will later say, the line between the two of them is blurry indeed.
Quote #9
It should have been a religious story, but it's puritanical. I feel your censure on all his Goddamns. That seems off to me. What is it but a low form of prayer when he or Les or anybody else God-damns everything? ("Seymour" 1.27)
Zooey Glass expresses very similar sentiments in the short story "Zooey" (also narrated by Buddy Glass, by the way). We can really see Seymour's influence on all of his younger siblings.