Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour

Okay. Fine. Maybe I only think this book is about loss because I know that, in later books, the same Glass family suffers losses and this sets the stage. But this is a story about a promise that is never realized and a relationship that is becoming progressively distant—and, in it, there is a sense of being lost if not having experienced a loss, specifically. In it, Buddy Glass takes Army leave to attend his brother’s wedding, but his brother never shows up. Somehow, Buddy winds up stuck in a limo with a group of disgruntled guests from whom he… show more.

One of four novella-length stories the legendary author of Catcher in the Rye published, this so-called introduction of the fictional author’s older, fictional brother—a literary conceit, as the portrait never gets past Seymour’s face—includes a long letter, ostensibly written by Seymour to his author-brother Buddy, which encompasses the best advice about writing that I know. "Were most of your stars out?" Seymour asks rhetorically...no, not asks...pleads.