Our finest storytellers spotlight that unsung literary archetype--the salesperson. "Closers" collects the work of many of America's finest literary voices on a subject long at the heart of our commercial culture. Included here are famous pieces of memorable fiction from writers such as Arthur Miller, David Mamet, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, M.F.K. Fisher, Flannery O'Connor, Richard Price, Eudora Welty, and Thomas Wolfe. What emerges is a provocative portrait of the foot soldiers of our bottom-line culture .
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Mike Tronnes promises the reader a good deal and he delivers. Closers is a collection of 30 of America's best tales about the salesperson as Everyman. The stories and selections from plays and novels explore the reasons why we are so fascinated by salespeople and why the job says so much about the American spirit. After all, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is considered one of the country's dramatic classics. Salesmen jokes--and horror stories about hustlers--abound. Almost all of us know what it's like at one time or the other to be out on a limb with a hope and a prayer.
This is fiction, but there are some lessons for any professional about the virtues of persistence and drive. Watch what you do, because at our core, we are all closers. "There's purposes we don't suspect, side paths we don't venture ... a surprise when we don't even know we need it," says the salesman in Michael Dorris's "Jeopardy." The book is for short-story fans, people who like reading the best parts of plays or just excellent prose. Besides Miller, the book features other great writers such as Thomas Wolfe, John Updike, David Mamet, Philip K. Dick, John Cheever, and Flannery O'Connor. There are also some you may not have heard of: Dorris, Thomas Bontly, and Seymour Epstein.
It's all inside the covers: the delivery, the back and forth, and finally, the handshake or nothing. Shelley Levene, the desperate real-estate huckster, cuts a deal in the selection from Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. Down and out and too old, Levene bitterly agrees to kick back a percentage to his boss for one last, hot lead. Loyalty means nothing in a bottom-line society. "Put a closer on the job," Levene pleads. The science fiction writer, Dick, portends a dark and ironic future. In "Sales Pitch," a robot salesman literally drives to death the harried space commuter, Ed Morris. "Suppose I never buy you," Morris demands of a ubiquitous robot in Dick's dismal landscape of interplanetary greed.
Other selections are as pertinent today as when they were written. Wolfe's "The Company" is a scary portrait of a company town in the days before the stock crash of 1929. The "Great Man" who founded the company exhorted that one of his machines should be in every store, shop, or business "that needs one." Wolfe's town self-destructs when inspiration and honesty become "old stuff" and the salesmen work "to create" the need, forgetting the customer in the process.
These stories can be lamenting: in corporate America, salespeople have never been strangers to working for commissions and few or no benefits. Cheever's commercial shoe salesman becomes forgotten like an old telephone book, gas light, or big yellow house. He fears that his life could be a total loss. Cheever reminds us of the reasons that closers must work so hard. --Dan Ring
From Publishers Weekly
Whether traveling, knocking on doors or waiting for shoppers to come their way, salesmen in modern fiction have come to epitomize the American dreamer-schemer. In this collection of 30 stories, novel excerpts and scenes from plays, famous pitchmen are shown plying their trade: John Updike's Rabbit sells Toyotas during the 1970s' oil crunch; David Mamet's desperate real estate peddlers maneuver for leads; Arthur Miller's Willy Loman hopes for redemption in his last days. Memorable characters emerge from less familiar pieces as well, among them Edna Ferber's traveling saleswoman from Roast Beef Medium and a sales-robot that can do anything except take no for an answer in Philip K. Dick's "Sales Pitch." Readers seeking inspirational books for corporate gifts should look elsewhere. Former salesman Tronnes's (Literary Las Vegas) selections tell more about the degradation of the pitchman than about the glories of winning friends and influencing people. Background information on these pieces (e.g., publication dates) would have been welcome.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Accessible insights into the seller's mind,
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This review is from: Closers: Great American Writers on the Art of Selling (Hardcover)
I often recommend novels to my sales training clients to help them get into the heads of people unlike themselves, to experience unfamiliar worldviews so they can better empathize with prospects. I recommend this collection of fiction to salespeople to help them get more comfortable in their own heads.This collection of short stories and novel excerpts covers the history of sales in modern America, from rail riding drummers who had no homes to today's realtor next door. I was pleased to see that most of the portrayals of salespeople were sympathetic and insightful, not the usual huckster bashing. Each selection captures the poignant human experience of making your living and earning your self-respect from the approval of strangers. Salespeople will learn that their concerns and fears, their appetites and distractions are shared by others in their profession. Perhaps this insight will give them the freedom to accept some of what they are trying to fix about themselves, leaving energy and attention to work on more satisfying projects. I particularly recommend the book to people who live or work with sales people. The stories of the people in this book will tell you more about what it is like to be a salesperson than you would likely learn by knowing one for twenty years.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic and unique stories about the art of selling!,
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This review is from: Closers: Great American Writers on the Art of Selling (Paperback)
While I'd recommend this as a "must read" book to anyone in business, this book should be read by a wider audience as well. The stories cover a gamut of emotions and reactions to the art of the "pitch" and many are thought-provoking. Yes, this is fiction, but there are some classic lessons here about the virtues of persistence and drive and a willingness to go the extra mile to reach a goal. In addition to such well-known writers as Thomas Wolfe, John Updike, David Mamet, Philip K. Dick and Flannery O'Connor, there are other writers which should be new to the reader. I'm not in sales (unless you consider convincing a reluctant teenager to clean his room or take out the trash a "sales pitch") but I couldn't put this book down. I came away realizing that the core values of a good salesperson are ones many of us hold dear- being persistant, having drive and ambition, reaching a goal.There are too many stand-outs in this collection to say that any one is the best but I was particulary intrigued by Philip Dick's tale about a robot who wouldn't take no for an answer, an unpredictable tale with a great twist at the end.
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