The members of the Glass family are listed here, from eldest to youngest:
- Bessie and Les Glass - retired Vaudeville performers, parents of the following seven children:
- ''. The only stories that directly feature him are Bananafish and Hapworth. He is the author of the letter that comprises the story of Hapworth, and is the main character in Bananafish (although it is later revealed in Seymour: An Introduction that Buddy actually wrote the bananafish story). While his actual presence is missing throughout the Glass stories, he is made mention of in most. Despite his lack of presence in the Glass saga, he is probably the largest focal point, and all the Glass siblings looked up to him.
- Buddy Glass (born . He narrates most of the Glass stories in his attempt to connect with his dead brother.
- Beatrice (Boo Boo) Glass - married, mother of three children. Appears in "Down at the Dinghy", included in '' Nine Stories '' and mentioned in "Hapworth 16, 1924". She is arguably the most well-adjusted of the Glasses, and has the closest thing resembling a normal life.
- Walt Glass - died in an accident in Occupied Japan shortly after World War II . Is described by surviving girlfriend in "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut," which is included in " Nine Stories "
- Waker Glass - a Roman Catholic priest, Walt's twin.
- Zachary Martin (Zooey) Glass (born 1930 ) - featured in '' Zooey '', in which he is approximately 25 years old. He is an actor, and (according to Buddy) the most attractive of all the children. The name Zachary Martin only appears several times in the short story ''Zooey''. He is characteristically misanthropic, and is spiteful of the way Buddy and Seymour raised Franny and him.
- Franny Glass (born 1935 ) - A twenty-year-old college student and Actress , she is featured in the two stories in '' Franny And Zooey ''. In both, she is reading a book, '' The Way Of A Pilgrim '', which contributes to an emotional breakdown.
- Lionel Tannenbaum - the son of Boo Boo Glass. He appears in "Down at the Dinghy", included in '' Nine Stories ''
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 ; all the children spent most of their childhood in an apartment on the Upper East Side .
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 ''.
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