The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit [Paperback]

Sloan Wilson (Author), Jonathan Franzen (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2002

Universally acclaimed when first published in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit captured the mood of a generation. Its title — like Catch-22 and Fahrenheit 451 — has become a part of America's cultural vocabulary. Tom Rath doesn't want anything extraordinary out of life: just a decent home, enough money to support his family, and a career that won't crush his spirit. After returning from World War II, he takes a PR job at a television network. It is inane, dehumanizing work. But when a series of personal crises force him to reexamine his priorities — and take responsibility for his past — he is finally moved to carve out an identity for himself. This is Sloan Wilson's searing indictment of a society that had just begun to lose touch with its citizens. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a classic of American literature and the basis of the award-winning film starring Gregory Peck. "A consequential novel." — Saturday Review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though it's cited in nearly every book and article about the culture of the 1950s, few readers under 65 know Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit firsthand. The 1955 bestseller is being reissued with a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen-and, indeed, the story of disappointed Westport, Conn., strivers Tom and Betsy Rath anticipates the novels of suburban anomie by Franzen and his contemporaries. Dreaming of a bigger house for his wife and three kids, WWII veteran Tom leaves his job with an arts foundation to be a well-paid public relations executive at the United Broadcasting Corporation. But corporate ladder climbing and consumer rewards leave him miserable. Though his sentimental conclusion now seems dated, Wilson's portrait of the martini-soaked malcontents is sharp, memorable and still resonant today.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The writing is vigorous, unvarnished, tartly observant; its overhanging disquietude isn't dated - if anything, it's deepened." - Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 4 edition (October 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582463
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582467
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid, purposeful, successful September 8, 2000

By Robert H. Nunnally Jr.

Format:Paperback

It's always a bit challenging reviewing a book which spawned a memorable, but altogether different in feel, movie, as this book did. One is more apt to run into the movie on cable than to run across the book. Although I like the movie, I liked the book much, much better. The movie features sweeping plot turns, while the book is a matter of simple, credible steps. The theme is the aftermath of World War II, and recovering one's civic sense after dealing with it. In modern terms, it might be called the sequel to Saving Private Ryan, in which the captain returns to civilian life.

We pick up the plot in medias res--the hero has stumbled, uninspired through a few years of peacetime which hold none of the promise that seemed evident prior to the war. The author does a good job of plugging us into this man-and-his-family plot without either the soap suds or a preachy tone taking over. Nothing in the book is a particular revelation--there are no real gasps in the plot. But the enterprise is carried off in a competent, undecorated style which keeps one hooked right through to the end. There's a world of metaphor here, but these characters feel real, and the metaphoric situations that the hero and his family must endure to find a place in a changed world come off more live than memorex. A domestic drama can indeed be written without losing the reader or drenching the reader in soap.

This is one of those good rainy afternoon reads. It won't save your soul, but it might help you slog through another cloudy day.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A pleasant find June 17, 2004

By Thomas Stamper VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

With so much being written about the "Greatest Generation" the story generally ends sometime around V-J day. Sloan Wilson's insightful novel gives readers an opportunity to see how a World War II veteran might handle the rat race in 1950s New York City.

Tom and Betsey Rath are married with three kids trying to keep up with the Joneses in their Connecticut suburb while Tom climbs the corporate ladder in Manhatten. The day to day conflicts are pretty interesting, but about halfway through the novel, Tom sees someone that brings his war past into the present.

The title of the book has come to mean the bland working man of the 1950s, but our hero Tom Rath is not bland. He has enough inner conflicts to field an Olympic team. Tom isn't some sycophant trying to get ahead, but a guy who killed and watched his friends get killed in the war. I wasn't expecting the depth of character.

The novel is written in clear direct language that makes it easy to follow the story and the real complexities of life. Stylistically, the omnipotent narrator is usually in the head of our hero Tom, but he occasionally jumps around to other minds for variation. Just as you've made up your mind about a simple character the narrator jumps into their skin and they too become a flesh and blood person.

The modern day criticism is that the novel has a happy ending, especially since happy endings are frowned upon in post-modern literature. But the important part of the book is not the resolution but the journey and Wilson gets the journey just right. I'm glad I gave the book a chance.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Wally Cleaver, he ain't. February 28, 2008

By M. G Watson TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Every now and again, a book or movie is produced which captures the spirit of the era in which it is written. Sometimes this is done by accident (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was seen by right-wingers as a warning about communist infiltration, and by left-winters as an attack on McCarthyism, when it fact it was neither) and sometimes on purpose (WALL STREET was an almost gleefully self-conscious in its attempt to sum up the greed-crazed 80s), but the effect is basically the same: the work in question becomes a catchphrase, encapsulating not just a story but the spirit of a decade or even a whole generation.

Sloan Wilson's THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT is such a work. Intended as mere novelized autobiography, it struck such a chord with readers that, decades after it was written, it still symbolizes for many the oddly shallow dark side of what was supposedly America's "Golden Era" - the 1950s.

SUIT is the story of Tom Rath, a middle-class American everyman who, in the mid-1950s, experiences a kind of premature midlife crisis. On the surface, Rath seems to be rock solid - he has a beautiful wife, three kids, a car, a house in the New York suburbs, and a good job with a secure future. Stepping off the A train with briefcase in hand, his missus always has a cold Martini on hand, and a nice meal on the stove. Hell, his aged grandmother is even about to will him a mansion on Long Island! By the plastic-fantastic standards of the 50s, he should be ecstatic. But he isn't. He isn't even happy, and neither is Mrs. Rath. They are, in fact, pretty miserable.

The Rath's prosperity is actually an illusion. His wife feels emotionally disconnected from him ever since he returned from World War II - and rightly so, since can't bring himself to talk about it or the seventeen men he killed while it was going on. His kids are spoiled. His car is a piece of junk on its last legs, and his "starter house" seems to have turned out to be his burial plot. His grandmother's "mansion" is a rotting hulk mired in zoning problems and lawsuits. Even his "secure" job downtown is an unsatisfying bore.

Prodded by feelings that his life is passing him by and that he has failed to achieve any of his prewar dreams, Rath chucks up his old job and takes a new one as a speechwriter for a workaholic millionaire. As he does so, he encounters an old acquaintance from his army days, the sight of whom forces him to face some very unpleasant truths from his wartime past - truths that threaten to destroy his marriage and ruin him financially. At the same time, he struggles to fit in in the go-go, cutthroat atmosphere of his new employer (his immediate superior, Ogden, is so undermining, condescending and rude that the normally placid Rath has fantasies of killing him). Over time, Rath - whose growing cynicism is alienting his wife even further - begins to question absolutely everything in his life - from his marriage to the corporate rat race. He's even forced into painful self-examination over his actions during World War Two. And this is the crux of the novel: will Rath open up to his wife - which could lead to ruination and divorce - or will he continue to play the tight-lipped, buttoned down Mr. Cleaver role that has been suffocating him since the end of the war?

SUIT is by no means a perfect book. The pace is often sluggish, and a lot of Wilson's prose is bland and colorless - although this may be by design, as his reminiscences of the war are extremely vivid and well-drawn, probably Wilson's way of indicating that Rath's past is more vivid than his present. There are some bizarre point-of-view shifts which occur surprisingly late in the novel, and the sub-plots are all wrapped up so conveniently it threatens the story's integrity. The final exchanges between Rath and his wife are totally unrealistic - the dialogue, realistic up to that point, becomes unbelievably melodramatic. But these flaws, while significant, don't really diminish the book's laurels.
Whether Wilson intended it to be or not, SUIT is a generational tale: Rath symbolizes the silent and painful battle that WW2 veterans waged with themselves after 1945, when they returned to find, in many cases, that that American Dream that they had fought and killed for consisted of nothing more than crass advertising, jingo patriotism and banal materialism, all set to the tune of a merry commercial jingle. Was it possible for such men to find meaning in such a shallow world as "Leave it to Beaver" represented? Sloan's answer to this question may surprise you.