The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker ? RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR ? An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences in mood or effect, they are both very much concerned with Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family. It struck me that they had better be collected together, if not deliberately paired off, in something of a hurry, if I mean them to avoid unduly or undesirably close contact with new material in the series. There is only my word for it, granted, but I have several new Glass stories coming along ? waxing, dilating ? each in its own way, but I suspect the less said about them, in mixed company, the better. Oddly, the joys and satisfactions of working on the Glass family peculiarly increase and deepen for me with the years. I can't say why, though. Not, at least, outside the casino proper of my fiction.

The author writes: FRANNY came out in The New Yorker in 1955, and was swiftly followed, in 1957 by ZOOEY. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambiguous one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.

Nine Stories is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor". (Nine Stories is the U.S. title; the book is published in many other countries as For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories.) The stories are: "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" "Just Before the War with the Eskimos" "The Laughing Man" "Down at the Dinghy" "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor" "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" "Teddy"

The author writes: Franny came out in The New Yorker

作为读者，特别是作为热爱《麦田里的守望者》这本书的读者，我们仍一如既往地爱着塞林格，因为是他创造出了我们青春的知音——霍尔顿。而这本《塞林格传》，则为我们开启了一扇门，通向的是一度神秘的塞林格。

In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."

在塞林格的经典短篇小说集《九故事》开篇“逮香蕉鱼的最佳日子”里，西摩开枪自杀，给无数读者留下巨大的悬念：西摩为什么自杀？ 西摩是塞林格笔下传奇的“格拉斯家族”七个孩子中的老大。这七个孩子个个是神童，尤以西摩为最。他十六岁即考入哥伦比亚大学，二十岁出头就成了大学教授。《抬高房梁，木匠们/西摩：小传》就以他的二弟巴蒂为叙述者，回顾西摩生前的种种往事，譬如西摩在婚礼当天作为新郎居然没有出现。 2009年1月1日是《麦田里的守望者》作者、美国文学大师J.D.塞林格九十周岁生日。《抬高房梁，木匠们/西摩：小传》中文版的出版，标志着塞林格四部小说第一次在中国出齐。

《弗兰妮与祖伊》是美国当代著名作家J.D.塞林格继《麦田里的守望者》、《九故事》之后出版的第三部作品，由《弗兰妮》与《祖伊》这两个相互有关联的中短篇小说组成，二者均发表于《纽约客》杂志，于一九六一年结集出版。