By
Lars Trodson
"Rarely
if ever in literary history has a handful of stories aroused so much
discussion, controversy, praise, denunciation, mystification and
interpretation. There will be more Glass stories, Mr. Salinger says. Perhaps,
when there are, a more coherent pattern will be apparent and certain mysteries
and ambiguities will be explained."
This
is what Orville Prescott wrote in his 1963 New York Times review of J.D.
Salinger's short story collection, "Raise High the Roofbeam,
Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction."
The
Prescott quote is instructional, if only because a coherent pattern was being executed by Salinger by the time "Raise High The Roofbeam" was published. Those
“certain mysteries and ambiguities,” as Prescott put it, were already being explained. It's just that no one was paying attention. When Salinger published "Hapworth 16, 1924" in June
of 1965, the set of clues was complete, at least as far as Salinger wanted to present them in his published work.
With
three short story collections ("Nine Stories," "Franny and Zooey," and "Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters") and one
novella (the "Hapworth" story), Salinger had presented a body of work that distinctly
reflects, embodies and celebrates the Four Noble Truths, the philosophical core of the Vedanta Buddhism he had been following since the late 1940s.
Vedanta
Buddhism, put across in a bold stroke, is a faith that embraces every path to
oneness with God, whether that path be Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or Christian. Salinger's
stories invoke each of these religions at certain times, and his attempt to
reach a oneness with God becomes more and more explicit with each Glass story,
including "Hapworth 16 1924."
In the short story "De Maurier-Smith's Blue Period," from "Nine Stories," he writes: "I advocate no
doctrine; it is not in my nature to do so."
That does not mean Salinger was not intent on finding some sense of peace. He would do it in his own way. It is essential to note, but not to elaborate on here, Salinger's experiences as a soldier during World War II, which by all accounts were horrific. He was going to rectify the atrocities he saw, not just in his mind, but in his writing.