What has depth and worth any more? Can we even talk in terms of heavy, or is the notion as trite as a mass media portrayal of hippies?
One of my favorite stories is a novella I first read years ago, written in the mid 1950s. It’s set in 1942. A soldier bridegroom stands up his bride, and only his brother has made it to the ceremony in a Manhattan brownstone. The brother, nicknamed Buddy, ends up sharing a ride with the maid of honor, honor being the key word. She is out for blood, not yet realizing the groom’s brother is in the same limousine.
The whole novella has a resonance I’ve rarely found elsewhere. It starts in the mid 1930s in a Manhattan bedroom, among the children of former vaudevillians, with the reading of a Taoist story set in China millenia earlier, and that story illuminates everything to come.
The Taoist tale involves two men, Chiu-fang Kao and Po Lo, who at different times are sent to find valuable horses. Kao apparently fails completely when he cannot describe the gender or color of the horse he selects, angering the lord who employed him. Lo, however, sees the truth and marvels at how far Kao’s perception has advanced, claiming Kao is so focused on the spiritual mechanism, the soul of the horse, that he no longer notices trivialities like gender or color.
The novella then focuses on the wedding day. The oldest brother, brilliant but (occasionally) erratic Seymour, is about to wed and none of the dispersed vaudevillian family can make it except Buddy, the second oldest, who, after boot camp, is in Georgia with pleurisy, but damn-near busts a gut getting to the wedding on time.
Except his brother Seymour stood up the bride, and fate or happenstance lands him in a limousine in Manhattan gridlock trapped by a parade, with the blood-boiling maid of honor to the jilted bride.
The author’s ironic detachment is perfect, every time I re-read it (a couple times every decade, perhaps) I am delivered back to that world, and I notice how cleverly he crafted the plot so that conflict dovetails with themes of tinny fame, voyeuristic analysis, and beauty that has depth, transcending categorization or surface appearances.
It’s seductive stuff for students, training to discard chaff and seek the germ of life, and the story still holds its charm for me now.
The combative maid of honor is glorious, vengeful. Yet the other passengers (including a tiny, delightful deaf mute, in cutaway tux) maintain an upright, proper civility, even as they grow testy in the stifling heat, and we begin to suspect that they suspect who Buddy is.
The personalities of the five passengers are adroitly developed well before Buddy finally acknowledges his connection. Desperate to escape, they leave the limo gridlocked in the Manhattan summer heat and Buddy brings his adversarial fellow riders to the apartment he shared with Seymour, where they can use a telephone, share a pitcher of potent Tom Collinses and his guests can examine the framed photographs of his famous vaudeveillian family, continuing a pitiless psycho-analysis and ruthless pigeonholing of what is wrong with them, especially Seymour.
And yet through letters and discovered diaries and notes penned in soap slivers on bathroom mirrors, an undercurrent of depth is revealed. I love the sense of weight the story delivers, as if I’m holding small lithe sculptures in my hands. And at the same time I still puzzle over pieces of it.
Among the photos on the wall is one purportedly of a young Hollywood star, with a scar sustained from a stone thrown by Seymour. Buddy later explains only to the deaf mute why Seymour threw the stone, “because she looked so beautiful … everybody knew that.”
I’ve puzzled over that for years, another figurine to roll in my hands, enjoying the heft, the feeling of weight. The deaf mute always makes me smile, almost laugh aloud, as does his abandoned cigar, a potential wedding present. I’m not sure I ever want to puzzle it all out with explanations; it’s fine for life to have some mystery, too. And the wedding situation has a resolution, also — but I’ll leave that to the story.
Along the way we get to peek at privileged correspondence, the family letters, diaries and notes, especially Buddy’s jaundiced view, counterpoint to Seymour’s exuberance and wonder, and a sister’s note, with the novella’s title written in soap on a mirror:
Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters
And I wish this reminiscence of it were better, that it did justice to what I think is J.D. Salinger’s best work.
OmbudsBen 
Can anyone explain the title? Is it a biblical reference?
I’ve wondered the same thing.
It’s something the narrator’s sister, Boo Boo, writes in soap on the mirror in Seymour and Buddy’s apartment.
Googling the phrase turned up nothing for me. but it does read like it’s a quote from somewhere, doesn’t it? Boo boo attributes it to “Irving Sappho”, whom Buddy says was their favorite contract writer for a certain movie studio, Elysium.
But you get the sense that’s tongue in cheek, no?
The title “Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters” comes from one of Sappho’s poem fragments, no. 88:
Raise high the roof beams, Workmen!
Hymenaeus!
Like Ares comes the bridgroom!
Hymenaeus!
Taller than all tall men!
Hymenaeus!
I’m guessing the Glass children were fans (or at least Seymour or Buddy might have been … I can’t quite remember any more)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/usappho/sph89.htm
as, thanks for clearing that up!
This is really beautiful writing, edifying and reverent and informed. Thank you so much for publishing it. It totally made my day and re-confirmed the place in my life that RHtRB,C’s holds, which is very near the quick. Thank you!
My pleasure, Brett, thanks for stopping by and for adding the note — you made my day, too.
Francamente, también hicieron el mío.
Gracias.
Having just finished Raise High for the first time myself (though surely not the last), I thoroughly enjoyed reading your take on it. A well-rounded and enlightened grasp indeed. Thank you!
Thanks for checking in, Laura. I’m glad to see someone else is enjoying the novella. It’s a treasure!
Thank you for this. I love Raise Hight the Roof Beam, Carpenters as well. If you ever care to uncover the reason behind the wedding gift, do read the beautiful Seymour, an introduction.
Thanks for stopping by, Maria. You know, years ago, I read Seymour, an Introduction, and remember enjoying it but finding it less accessible. I’ll have to take a look at it again, keeping an eye peeled for partially smoked cigars.
[…] this blog. Ms. Maria del Mar found my post on Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (Roof Beam, to us) which I had ended with a note on the odd wedding gift at the end of the story, wondering […]
[…] had been decades since I read Seymour — An Introduction, and the dun-colored mare of my take is here, but, since I read it oh, so, long ago, in college, there was much more that struck me […]