Customer Reviews

How to Sell: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a tale sleekly told. It is not international in scope (not counting its Canadan roots) but deals with a specific American locale, the southwest, in that decade of excess, the 80's.
I've been in fine jewelry and for me the portraits had the ring of truth. Perhaps stronger black comedy and better dialogue would have made it a perfect gem.
It was a great read for a very long airplane trip.

Bobby Clark is 16 and a thief when he drops out of school, leaves his demanding girlfriend, and follows his big brother to Texas and into the shady retail jewelry business. Fronting as respectable businessmen, the brothers live high and fast, scamming and charming their way through the fast-paced plot.

In the brothers' world, nearly everybody is on the make; the cheaters cheating each other as the chicanery goes round and round. Bobby is up to his neck in swindles and shady deals but never feels any culpability. He's always just doing what he feels he much to keep his head above water as he gets in deeper and deeper.

Martin's characters make their choices and take their chances, but frequently with blinders on. The brothers are too busy keeping their balance on the tightrope to look around and see where they're headed. Their father wears internal blinders but loves them in his own (crazy) way. Only one character sees and turns her back--taking up a profession conventionally considered less moral then selling jewelry. But we know better.

All in all, a dark but fascinating tale of moral choices that doesn't preach moral absolutes.

This is not your average crime/heist novel. Yes, there are seedy criminals, and yes, seedy behavior galore, but the plot meanders in the tradition of the best literary fiction novels. If you regularly read crime novels (Elmore Leonard, Robert Parker), you will most likely be disappointed at the lack o0f plot waiting for you in "How to Sell." Instead, this is character-driven fiction at its finest.

Is it "The Great Gatsby" of the early 21st-century, as Bookmarks Magazine claims? Perhaps. The book it most reminded me of, however, was Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son." Like that book, "How to Sell" draws a lot from its author's own life -- how much, we'll never know. But if you enjoy "How to Sell," definitely hunt down some of the interviews online that Clancy Martin did for its release...his life story is pretty amazing.

One Amazon reviewer wrote below: "Reading this book is a bit like being cornered at a party by a voluble drunk who drones on about his boring profession, his sex life, and his drug taking. It quickly gets tiresome and you look for an escape." Interestingly enough, Clancy Martin is exactly that: a locquacious drunk. To note, he's also considered one of the leading existentialist philsopher's in the nation. I know both these facts because I'm one of his students. Having been introduced to these facts, I think, is essential for undertaking this novel. Don't dismiss the novel as some ex-jewelry salesman's lark at retrospection.

This is the sordid story of a young scam artist jeweler, Bobby, and his scam artist brother. They work at a jewelry store in Fort Worth, Texas, earning their living by cheating customers with fake diamond jewelry and fake Rolex watches. They trust no one, and cheat everyone, including each other. It is a depiction of life with no moral compass, where even blood forges bonds that break at the drop of a hat (or the passing of a long-legged looker, as it may be). The story is littered with drugs, cheating (of every sort), sex with prostitutes, violence and unkind words. It also contains an in-depth and description of the jewelry selling and swindling business.

This is all fine. At times it feels like Martin has gone out of his way to show off his research, and I actually got more into the characters when it got into the more typical relationship drama and away from the drama of the store. In general, I'd say this book was interesting, though not great. But in researching Clancy Martin, I realized that there was a good deal of back story that changed the way I thought of the novel.
Martin is a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has written numerous books, the titles of which read like thematic notes for How to Sell. The titles include: Love, Lies and Marriage; Honest Work; The Philosophy of Deception along with translations of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Is How to Sell meant to be an amoral microcosmos? Or perhaps one based on the Nietzschian morality that values wealth, strength, health and power over modern ideals.

It turns out, How to Sell is more autobiographical. It came across as extensively researched because Martin actually was a jewelry salesman in his youth. "I would say that, unfortunately, most of the book is lifted directly from my life--with some exaggeration and lots of omission," Martin admitted in an interview with Newsweek. He recently went through a rough, suicidal patch and writing the book was a part of him working through it. Although his life has evened out, he still believes that one of the first steps of being a great salesman is self-deception. You have to believe what you're selling.

All this is interesting. Unfortunately, I found it all slightly more interesting than the novel itself.

What I loved about How to Sell was its inside-baseball view of the jewelry industry - I learned enough scams and schemes to scare me from ever entering a jeweler shop again. Unfortunately, it was wrapped around a fairly conventional story that, ultimately, didn't take the reader particularly far or anywhere particularly unpredictable. But boy, what stories about the industry...

HOW TO SELL is a novel by Clancy Martin. It is his first one, which is my favorite read. Generally, first novels are first person narratives about a subject the author is familiar with. Write what you know is a truism. "How to Sell" is about the fine jewelry business. Great, I thought, I'd learn something I know nothing about. That is why I like first novels--they inform me about parts of the world I haven't experienced. The fashion world, the art world, politics, Africa, the movie business, the CIA, and on and on. Martin did, according to the jacket, "... worked for many years in the fine jewelry business." And, he was a philosophy professor. VERY interesting, I thought. I was not disappointed. I was puzzled.

How to sell? Lie, steal, and cheat. Be very good at it, and have no conscience about it. There it is in a nut's shell. Oh, and it helps to stay stoned on cocaine and speed and drink like a fish and f__k like a rabbit. This can't be true, can it? This was a tale about two brothers, a father, and two very loose women who were more interested in screwing than money, jewels, or children. It wasn't particularly well written--the dialogue was confusing and everyone seemed to speak with the same voice. In addition, it was hard to tell the order of events; I often had to reread paragraphs and couldn't always tell what was happening, to what were the narrator's inner thoughts. Was that on purpose, to show just how screwed up this person was? Or ... is the author that crazy? I decided to check him out and googled him. Up popped a two-hour debate he had with a pastor of a Christian church titled "Does God Exist?"

This is what I think. The novel was a vehicle for the professor to profess about what amorality looks like. The jewelry business cannot be THAT sleazy! The whole novel just made me want to shower and never, ever, set foot in a jewelry store. AND ...: Give up sex, stop drinking, and never, ever do any drug again, legal or not. It was also a way to mock churches and those who preach they KNOW (the father is an insane preacher/clairvoyant/psychic) what is the Truth of things. As it turns out, Martin's father was a man of God who did have a church and his debater opponent, the pastor, says he believes ALL atheists have father issues, and subsequently, problems with authority and thus God. [My, my.] Professor Martin declared, "I am not an atheist." The pastor asserted, "Without God, there cannot be any reason for moral behavior." [Yikes.] Martin came back, "NO, the absence of belief makes possible, and more likely, true moral behavior and allows for humanity to thrive." [I cheered.]

The debate took place two years ago. Martin might well have written the novel as part of ... process therapy. It is not easy to take on God and the justified, pretentious, conforming, traditional, know-it-all. Maybe he overreacted a little. I gave it four stars. It is different. It is entertaining. And in some paradoxical way (philosophy professors love paradox) it is a moral story about how not to live.

Reading this book is a bit like being cornered at a party by a voluble drunk who drones on about his boring profession, his sex life, and his drug taking. It quickly gets tiresome and you look for an escape. I've given this book a middling rating because the author clearly has talent and the writing is always competent. Unfortunately, the master-of-the-universe characters are repellent and generate no interest or sympathy. Maybe once Martin gets his knowledge of jewelry off his chest, he'll deliver a second novel of greater appeal and substance.

Great first novel from Philosopher / Jeweler / Canadian - Texas Clancy Martin.

An eye-raising tale of the sordid underworld of high stakes Jewelry business in a rough, but touching coming of age story. A quick, easy read that leaves you wishing for more sooner than you'd hoped.

Hopefully more to come from this promising new author.

Moves very briskly; the read of a few hours, demanding all the while an answer to that crucial question: "What happens next?"

I loved it. Suitably sordid.

Other reviewers have dismissed certain elements of the plot as improbable; fair enough, but never to a close-the-book-in-disgust extent. The improbability lends playfulness and fun.

This book is the epitome of the summer beach read. I mean that in the most complimentary way.