Seymour: An Introduction
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"Seymour: An Introduction" is a story in the Glass Family series by J. D. Salinger. As the title suggests it is an attempt by Buddy Glass, Seymour's writer brother, to introduce the reader to his brother's life and death (by suicide, in 1948). This story, like all the others on the subject of the Glass family, deals in part with its obsessions with Zen Buddhism, haiku, and the Hindu philosophy of vedanta.
The story is a narrative. The style is somewhat like a diary. The writing style directly engages the reader, especially the use of quotations (he takes stabs at the literary world like so). The narrator writes from his secluded home making recollections and going on almost stream of thought telling how ecstatically happy of a writer he is.
It attempts to deal with the narrator's brother Seymour but is almost autobiographical. The book answers questions and adds pieces to the puzzle of the Glass family. Essentially, Salinger has recreated his family in fiction. It talks about the characters modelled directly from family and reminiscent of family. He goes on to tell their involvements and appearances in his works. Seymour: an Introduction is in some parts confessional. Salinger is anecdotal in recalling Seymour and divulges the profound influence of his brother on his identity and his writing.
