J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [149]
At the request of his sister Boo Boo who has been forced to “fly to parts unknown for the war effort,” Buddy has traveled from Fort Benning, Georgia, to New York City to attend his brother Seymour’s wedding.* Crowded into “an enormous old brownstone” with other guests, Buddy awaits Seymour’s arrival. After waiting in vain for an hour and twenty minutes, the bride-to-be, Muriel Fedder, finally accepts that she has been stood up at the altar and is guided out of the brownstone by her family and whisked away in the waiting bridal car, without her intended groom.
The Fedders, humiliated by events and furious with Seymour, announce to the guests that despite their being forced to call off the wedding, the reception will take place. The crowd then clumsily files into a series of waiting cars to make their way to the Fedders’ home.
The awkwardness of Buddy’s position, which is unique among the guests, is painful. To make matters worse, Buddy finds himself in a limousine with Muriel’s greatest champion, the matron of honor, along with the bride’s aunt and great-uncle and the matron of honor’s husband, “the Lieutenant.” The matron of honor is exploding with fury. Her attacks on the absent bridegroom are so rabid that Buddy is placed in a difficult position. No one knows that he is Seymour’s brother. Does he admit his relation to the errant groom and defend his brother, whose absence Buddy himself doesn’t understand, or does he continue to remain silent and attempt to conceal his relation to Seymour?
After a series of amusing and sometimes bizarre incidents, the limousine is barred from reaching the Fedders’ apartment by a parade and the wedding guests wind up not at the reception but at the apartment that Buddy shares with Seymour. When the matron of honor continues to attack Seymour, even within the haven of his home, Buddy finally rises to his brother’s defense. In doing so, he is forced to admit that he is Seymour’s brother, and he receives the brunt of the matron of honor’s rage.
During this conflict, Buddy finds Seymour’s diary stashed away in the bathroom. Reading it enlightens him to his brother’s motivation for having stood up his bride at the altar. It also enlightens readers as to Seymour’s character and personality.
The story’s two major conflicts, the one between Buddy and the matron of honor and the one between Buddy and himself (as he attempts to rationalize Seymour’s seemingly callous selfishness), come to an end when the matron of honor calls the bride’s family and returns to the group with the announcement that Seymour and Muriel have eloped.
Besides parallels with previous stories, “Carpenters” contains similarities with Salinger’s own life that are unmistakable. Both he and Seymour were corporals and served in the Army Air Corps during the war. Like Seymour, Salinger underwent basic training at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, before being transferred to Georgia, where Buddy is stationed. On a private level, by placing the events in 1942, Salinger draws a personal comparison between Muriel Fedder and Oona O’Neill. In the story Buddy has never met Seymour’s intended bride. However, in her letter, his sister Boo Boo describes Muriel as being physically beautiful but intellectually vacant, a description remarkably similar to those given to Jerry’s own 1942 belle. In addition, Seymour’s diary entries describing his trips from Fort Monmouth to New York to meet Muriel correspond to Salinger’s own routine in 1942 while he was dating O’Neill.
The connections between the plot of “Carpenters” and Salinger’s life in 1955 are especially obvious. “Carpenters” is a story about a wedding written the same year that Salinger himself was married. In addition, it was written while his wife was pregnant, giving a special depth to this first true Glass family