How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Story.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
To get back to the plot, I remember that while all three - the Matron of Honor, her husband, and Mrs. Silsburn - were conjunctively staring at me and watching me cough, I glanced over at the tiny elderly man in the back. ("Roof Beam" 2.47)
This is an example of the meta-fictional style of both of "Room Beam" and "Seymour" – both the fictional author (Buddy) and the elements of the narrative are explicitly discussed as such.
Quote #2
"Yes, but I solemnly promised her. The apartment's gonna be loaded with all kinds of crazy aunts and uncles and absolute strangers, and I told her I'd stand guard with about ten bayonets and see that she got a little privacy and –" She broke off. "Oh, God. This is awful."
Mrs. Silsburn gave a small, stilted laugh. "I'm afraid I'm one of the crazy aunts," she said. Clearly, she was affronted. ("Roof Beam" 2.58-9)
Notice how one thing after another raises the level of tension and discomfort for the guest in the car – social tensions, Buddy's coughing, the heat, the parade, etc. The stability of the scene is increasingly disturbed as the story continues.
Quote #3
He walked slowly and very independently, not to say insolently, the few steps over to the intersection, where the ranking policeman was directing things. The two then stood talking to each other for an endless amount of time. (I heard the Matron of Honor give a groan, behind me.) Then, suddenly, the two men broke into uproarious laughter - as though they hadn't really been conversing at all but had been exchanging very short dirty jokes. Then our driver, still laughing uninfectiously, waved a fraternal hand at the cop and walked - slowly - back to the car. He got in, slammed his door shut, extracted a cigarette from a package on the ledge over the dashboard, tucked the cigarette behind his car, and then, and then only, turned around to make his report to us. ("Roof Beam" 2.67)
This passage is a great example of Salinger's prowess when it comes to physical description. We can so clearly see that the driver resents his guests and is reveling in the small bit of power he momentarily has over them. And yet Salinger hasn't told us any of this – we get it all through physical details. Keep an eye out for more non-verbal communication, even from the author to the reader, throughout the course of these two short stories.
Quote #4
(It isn't easy, to this day, to account for the Matron of Honor's having included me in her invitation to quit the ship. It may simply have been inspired by a born leader's natural sense of orderliness. She may have had some sort of remote but compulsive urge to make her landing party complete.... My singularly immediate acceptance of the invitation strikes me as much more easily explainable. I prefer to think it was a basically religious impulse. In certain Zen monasteries, it's a cardinal rule, if not the only serious enforced discipline, that when one monk calls out "Hi!" to another monk, the latter must call back 'Hi!' without thinking.) ("Roof Beam" 2.131)
We can start to understand why Buddy doesn't explicitly answer the question of why he stays with this group of wedding guests. We see that his understanding of the matter isn't exactly clear. That is, he explains the situation as he understands it – in veiled terms and abstruse comparisons.
Quote #5
It was a day, God knows, not only of rampant signs and symbols but of wildly extensive communication via the written word. If you jumped into crowded cars, Fate took circuitous pains, before you did any jumping, that you had a pad and pencil with you, just in case one of your fellow-passengers was a deaf-mute. If you slipped into bathrooms, you did well to look up to see if there were any little messages, faintly apocalyptical or otherwise, posted high over the washbowl. ("Roof Beam" 3.26)
Such written communication is not only a motif in the story, but a major thematic element as well. The complications of communication are introduced in "Roof Beam" but explored more explicitly in "Seymour," where Buddy discusses the difficulty of expressing emotion through writing.
Quote #6
I read and reread the quotation, and then I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and opened Seymour's diary. ("Roof Beam" 3.28)
Salinger brilliantly gives Seymour a place in this narrative despite the fact that his character is entirely absent. We hear his voice, we learn about his psychology, and we get a sense of his motivations through this diary.
Quote #7
The Lieutenant rang the elevator bell, and the three stood leadenly watching the indicator dial. No one seemed to have any further use for speech. I stood inn the doorway of the apartment, a few feet away, dimly looking on. ("Roof Beam" 4.66)
Come to think of it, has speech really done anything for this group all day? They've been talking back and forth, but have they really been communicating?
Quote #8
What happened was, she sat down in the middle of our driveway one morning to pet Boo Boo's cat, and Seymour threw a stone at her. He was twelve. That's all there was to it. He threw it at her because she looked so beautiful sitting there in the middle of the driveway with Boo Boo's cat. ("Roof Beam" 5.2)
One interpretation is that this is just another way of communicating for Seymour – much the same way that Charlotte used to stomp on his foot during broadcasts when she really liked anything he was saying.
Quote #9
I feel I have a knowledge, a kind of editorial insight gained from all my failures over the past eleven years to describe him on paper, and this knowledge tells me he cannot be got at with understatement. The contrary, in fact. I've written and histrionically burned at least a dozen stories or sketches about him since 1948 - some of them, and I says it what shouldn't, pretty snappy and readable. But they were not Seymour. Construct an understatement for Seymour and it turns, it matures, into a lie. An artistic lie, maybe, and sometimes, even, a delicious lie, but a lie. ("Seymour" 6.2)
This passage sends us right back to the epigraphs, and particularly to Kierkegaard's discussion of an error as an integral part of the work.