Customer Reviews

Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II

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Sloan Wilson always claimed that this book as well as the original Man in the Gray Flannel Suit where both partially autobiographical. True as this maybe, the two books do not seem like they tell the story of the same people (despite the fact there are the same characters in both of them), they do not even seem to be written by the same person.

The original book is written in third person, while the sequel is written in first person - this means that in the sequel we get to peep only into Tom Rath's mindset and not the people he associate with. That tells to me that the real character, based on whom the novel is written may have stopped taking other's feelings into consideration. At the least the author has sidelined the other characters in the novel.

Tom Rath in the sequel seems to have less moral fiber than his original counterpart - his beliefs a mere shell of what they used to be. His skills at managing his emotions, all but shattered. Everything he built up in the original novel to maintain and sustain his way of life is shattered in the sequel at the very beginning, paving the way for what I believe is a less that satisfactory ending. Other characters with strong moral fiber like Judge Saul Bernstien totally disappears in the sequel.

The original Tom Rath, attempts to use sound judgment in managing his entire life, now chooses to use it only in his professional life; yet the reason he does it no longer exists, he doesn't even enjoy what he does. He seemed to have inherited most of the weaknesses of his boss Ralph Hopkins, while none of his strengths. Instead of learning from the mistakes he had made earlier, he seems to be repeating them, maybe even indulging in self pity by dwelling on them. And in the desperate situations he gets himself into, he tries to fix by being a perfect control freak. None of the courage and wisdom of the original Tom Rath. None of the guts he displayed during trying times.

The original Tom Rath was an ordinary man who some how or other did extra-ordinary things, for the love of his family, for what we believed in (beautifully portrayed in the movie version by Gregory Peck). The Tom Rath in the sequel was an ordinary man who did less than ordinary things, who ended up living a less than ordinary life, it was a man who stopped believing. I cannot see Gregory Peck as this Tom Rath.

For all purposes, this was another man and another story, maybe a true one, but hardly a good one. Not that I am claiming the story would have been any good if Tom Rath's character remained consistent in the sequel, but it was a poor story about a lesser person written in an unsatisfactory manner.

If you would like to look up to "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", do not read this book. If you would like to get a glimpse of the true life of the real person behind the character of Tom Rath, then go ahead.