The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955)

Book Circle Reads 158

Title: [THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT]

Author: [[SLOAN WILSON]]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everthing going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race - what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out.

At once a searing indictment of corporate culture, a story of a young man confronting his past and future with honesty, and a testament to the enduring power of family, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a deeply rewarding novel about the importance of taking responsibility for one's own life.

My Review: 1955. That is, if you're math-challenged, 58 years ago, and the year that Simon & Schuster published this book. So Wilson was writing it in, it's safe to say, 1953 (60 years ago). And this is what Wilson said:

Money, I need money, {Tom} thought. If they don't build a new public shcool, I should be able to afford a private school. I should get everything but money out of my head and really do a job for Hopkins. I ought to be at work now....
Money, Tom thought. The housing project could make money, but it depends on re-zoning, and Bernstein says we shouldn't ask for that until they vote on a new school.
A new school, he thought---so much depends on that! ... I should work for a new school, and I should work harder for Hopkins, and I should be making plans for our housing project. Where did I ever get the idea that life is supposed to be anything but work? A man's work should be his pleasure---I shouldn't expect anything more.

Tom Rath has just been to see the overcrowded public school his daughters have to attend because, unlike his own father, he can't afford to put them in a private school. He muses on these thoughts while waiting for a late commuter train into the city, where he will take on a lowly personal assistant's position and, in the process, displace a number of female employees from their physical space.

Sixty years since Wilson was penning these words, and not that much has changed. Now, of course, it could easily be a mom having these platform reveries, because we've been sold the bill of goods that nannies and au pairs are plenty good enough to raise the kids we've had but don't feel like raising even if it means NOT having a home theater, six DVR-equipped TVs, and each kid with an unshared Xbox. If mom's better at business, dad, YOU stay home and raise those people you engendered. Read to them, make them a snack after carpool, help with their homework. Hiring out parenthood sorta makes it pointless, doesn't it?

Ahem.

Me and my rants.

Wilson's book analyzes the sources of Tom's inner discontent as disconnection and materialism. I agree. The alarm bell sounded by this, and by the 1956 movie, went unheeded despite the fact that both were hugely popular and successful in their own spheres. (The movie was as good as the book, for once.)

At every turn, MONEY the getting and spending of, obsesses and defines Tom. His wealthy grandmother is being cared for by a greedy granny-nanny, and the hijinks appertaining thereto are most instructive for today's audience. Tom's boss, the venal and piggish Hopkins, plays out before Tom's increasingly revolted gaze his own probable future of alienated kid (extra probable because his three are TV obsessed brats), estranged wife, and grasping mistress(es). Then things get complicated when a wartime indiscretion with an Italian lass provides a surprise to Tom's unsuspecting wife.

Wilson wrote of his own time. Change the props, update the clothes, and make it about Betsy the wife, and nothing much has changed.

I'm sad about that. So much needless hurt caused in this world from sheer, wasteful greed for MORE when there's more than enough right in front of these hungry-souled people. ( )

I really liked this book, but I have to say, I wasn't overly thrilled with the ending. As others have said, it was a little too pat for my liking...everything works out and everyone lives happily ever after. It wasn't enough to completely ruin the book for me, but I was disappointed by the end. ( )

Quick easy fiction. 1950s piece about morality of advancement and struggles of the salaryman. A happy ending, for once! ( )

Tom Rath is a young family man interested in doing the best for his wife Betsy and their three children. So he dons his gray flannel suit to head off to work in New York every day, eventually deciding to throw his hand in for a better job so that they can afford a bigger house and send their kids to college.

As you might be able to tell from the description, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit isn’t exactly a thrilling page-turner. Its story is mostly that of mundane everyday things that we’ve all faced at one time or another – not having a big enough salary, worrying about money, finding a good job, pleasing the boss at the new job, falling behind on home repairs, and struggling with marital and parenting woes from time to time. Eventually, some things happen that are more outside the norm for many like inheriting a boondoggle, having a will contested, recalling traumatic war experiences, and facing the possibility of an affair coming to light. But, all in all, this is a book that deals with human experiences that are not incredibly out of the ordinary and does so in a pretty straightforward way.

To me, the most interesting parts of the book were the juxtaposition of Tom’s wartime experiences and his rather dull life now (or even compared to Betsy’s letters at the time of what was going on back home). Some of the book’s best quotes come from here, including:
- “It had been almost like a suburban community, with the men all working for the same big corporation.”
- “How strange that after all the long months of killing, there would be finally, perhaps, the birth of a child, and that this would be the one thing he had done in the last two years which could conceivably lead to trouble.”
- “How curious it was to find that apparently nothing was ever really forgotten, that the past was never really gone, that it was always lurking, ready to destroy the present, or at least to make the present seem absurd … ”
- “It is strange, he thought, that almost always there is so much irony in success.”

Overall, though I found the book just “okay” at best. It was rather plodding at the beginning and then went off on weird tangents at other times, looking very closely at the lives of other characters for brief moments and then not coming back to them. None of the characters were particularly all that compelling, although I did find myself rooting for Tom on some occasions. His wife Betsy, with her seemingly unabated consumerism and throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude sometimes tempered by a holier-than-thou attitude, irritated me a great deal. After spending so much time with this book and looking at some events in sometimes excruciating detail, the ending did not feel conclusive at all with many things still up in the air.

My copy of the book was the audio version, which had a good reader who helped bring this rather flat book more to life. This version had an introduction from Jonathan Franzen, which noted some interesting critical readings and interpretations of the book, although I didn’t really find them to ring true myself. The book also ended with the author’s introduction to the 1983 edition, in which he explained he would be finally writing a sequel. Not liking this book and its characters enough to invest in a second book, I only read the Wikipedia summary of it, and I have to say it sounds even more disappointing. ( )