Some comment in advance, as plain and bare as I can make it: My name, first, is Buddy Glass, and for a good many years of my life—very possibly, all forty-six—I have felt myself installed, elaborately wired, and, occasionally, plugged in, for the purpose of shedding some light on the short, reticulate life and times of my late, eldest brother, Seymour Glass, who died, committed suicide, opted to discontinue living, back in 1948, when he was thirty-one.