"This study hopes to contribute to a better understanding of Salinger's later fiction by concentrating on those aspects of its form and meaning that have not yet been adequately explained. It will offer close readings of the six Glass stories as self-contained accounts; it will describe the way in which the shape of the stories has changed over the years; it will explain the major religious and aesthetic ideas mentioned by the Glasses; and it will present an interpretation of the overall meaning of the Glass series as a composite novel."--Preface.