Glass family

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The Glass family is a group of fictional characters that have been featured in a number of J.D. Salinger's short stories. All but one of the Glass family stories were first published in The New Yorker; several of them have been collected and published in the volumes Nine Stories; Franny and Zooey; and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.

[edit] Members

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The members of the Glass family are listed here, from eldest to youngest:

  • Bessie and Les Glass: Retired vaudeville performers and parents of the following seven children:
  • Webb "Buddy" Glass (1919-Present): The protagonist in "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters," and the narrator of "Zooey", "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters", "Seymour: An Introduction." It is revealed in the latter that he wrote at least two stories collected in Nine Stories: "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Teddy". It is also suggested in "Seymour: An Introduction" that Buddy wrote The Catcher in the Rye. Buddy is often considered to be Salinger's alter ego. The character lives in upstate New York and teaches at a women's college. Buddy was very close to Seymour before Seymour committed suicide in 1948, and he narrates most of the Glass stories in his attempt to connect with his dead brother.
  • Beatrice "Boo Boo" Glass (1921-Present): Married, mother of three children, Boo Boo appears centrally in "Down at the Dinghy," is mentioned in "Hapworth 16, 1924," and is often referenced in "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" as the "sea-faring" Glass sibling currently occupying the New York apartment where much of the story's action takes place. Boo Boo "modestly prefers to be referred to as a Tuckahoe homemaker."
  • Walt Glass (1923-1945): American soldier killed in an accident in Occupied Japan shortly after World War II. He is described by his girlfriend in "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,". He was also described in "Franny and Zooey" as being the only truly "lighthearted" son in the family.
  • Zachary Martin "Zooey" Glass (1930-Present): Title character of "Zooey," in which he is approximately 25 years old. He is an actor, and (according to Buddy) the most attractive of all the children. Boo Boo describes him as "the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo." He is characteristically misanthropic which he attributes to Seymour and Buddys' imposition of their college-age infatuation with Eastern mysticism on himself and Franny as children.
  • Frances "Franny" Glass (1935-Present): Title character of "Franny," she is a college student and actress. In both "Franny" and "Zooey", she is depicted reading the book, The Way of a Pilgrim, which contributes to an emotional breakdown.

The children are all precocious, and in fact have all appeared on a fictional radio quiz show called It's a Wise Child. Wise Child has, according to Salinger's stories, sent all seven Glass children through college.

The family is of Jewish-Irish heritage. Their father Les, is Jewish, and their mother Bessie is Irish.

The Glass family lives in New York City; all the children spent most of their childhood in an apartment on the Upper West Side.

[edit] Influences on other works

Some of the characters in the Wes Anderson movie The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) were purportedly modelled after the Glass family. It is interesting to note that Boo Boo is married to a Mr. Tannenbaum, as described in the story "Down at the Dinghy."

The stories that make up the Glass Family chronicle were first published in the late 1940's and the 1950's. Their undercurrents of urban over-sophistication, eastern philosophy and longing for childlike naïveté helped to seed the 1960's imagination.

In February 1977, Esquire (magazine) published, "For Rupert - with no promises" as an unsigned work of fiction. This was the first time in its 44 year history that Esquire (magazine) hadn't identified a fiction writer. Readers speculated that it was the work of "J. D. Salinger", the reclusive author best known for "The Catcher in the Rye". As for the story, the signals are quite clear: first-person singular, names of the Glass family in "For Esmé with Love and Squalor", events from the story "For Esmé with Love and Squalor". Gordon Lish is quoted as saying, "I tried to borrow Salinger's voice and the psychological circumstances of his life, as I imagine them to be now. And I tried to use those things to elaborate on certian circumstances and events in his fiction to deepen them and add complexity." The Wall Street Journal 2/25/1977

Zooey Glass is also the name of a folk singer who lives in Montreal.

Esmé Squalor from the Series of Unfortunate Events is named that because of "For Esmé with Love and Squalor".

The Glass Family is also seen by many to have influenced the Incandenza family of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, one of whom (Mario Incandenza) is nicknamed "Boo Boo."

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