We all have a list of books we feel we should read, should have read long ago, and somehow passed by. My own includes such classics as Catcher In The Rye, A Canticle For Liebowitz, A Separate Peace…and until recently, The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit.

The title alone suggests and entire era, a movement, a period in history to be both remembered and forgotten. A cultural cul-d-sac that an entire generation rebelled against. Even in my own experience, it suggested a lifestyle of formal acquiescence to a stifling conformity that set an example to be either embraced or scorned.

And yet, I wonder how many of us knew nothing about the story.

So this year I did due diligence and read it. It was not what I expected. 

Published in 1955, it’s the story of a war veteran trying to make a life in the exuberant possibilities of post-war America. He works for a foundation, his work is appreciated, but the fact is he simply doesn’t make enough money to meet the expectations of wife, three kids, and his own notion of success. Upon advice from an acquaintance he applies for a job at the United Broadcast Company. 

Now, he comes from money, but his grandmother has pretty much squandered it all. She still occupies a sprawling house that sits on a lot of untouched acreage, but as to cash reserves, not much. 

Our Hero gets the job, but not the one he expected. Instead he will be working directly with the president of the company on a special project. When he reports to work, he discovers an elevator operator he knew in the army, someone who knows a secret about him he worries might become a source of blackmail. During the war, in Italy, he had a lover, a young woman trying to get by. She has a child by him. The war ends, he goes home to his American wife, and enters the struggle.

Everything turns on these points. Will he succeed at his new job? Will his indiscretion be revealed? Will his grandmother leave him the estate? 

The novel made a huge impression when it was published. Bestseller and then, almost immediately, a major motion picture starring Gregory Peck. And this was Sloan Wilson’s first novel.

Reading it today…

It’s a fairy tale. It’s a wishfulfilment, semi-cautionary yarn about honesty and backbone and what can only be described as the entrenched innocence of that decade of American history. Everything comes out fine. Or if not exactly fine, no one ends up impoverished, imperiled, or negatively impacted in any way they can’t handle. Our Hero walks a thick tightrope between integrity and conformity that pays off. Granted, a few things are left unresolved, but we know it will all be fine. Everything will be fine. He even tells his wife about the Italian lover and the child and after a day or two of near-panic, she adjusts and say it will be fine and they should send money.

All in all, it is a dissection of the components of 1950s corporate aspirations. There is a former servant who tries to pull a scam about the grandmother’s estate—he fails. It’s possible that the immediate superiors of Our Hero will engineer his ignominious ouster from what looks to be a privileged, plum job—they don’t. The community where he lives might not agree to a new school, which would torpedo his nascent plans for a housing development on the land he inherits—the school passes.

Nothing really bad happens to Our Hero. He doesn’t even seem to be suffering much from his war experience, which in some ways reads like the core of another novel which might be much better, particularly as he inadvertently kills his best friend. By his own admission he killed 17 men during the war. No PTSD. Well, one wouldn’t expect that from a 1955 novel, not the way we understand it today, but psychological damage was not unknown, even if it did get little public attention. Still, Our Hero is remarkably well-adjusted.

The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit is a guidebook as much as anything else, but as I say, it is an American post-war fairytale. Warnings about dangerous corners, potholes, alleyways, but all the warnings lead to nothing much, and at the end we know he’s going to achieve everything he wants to.

One can see the rejection coming not a decade later. The lessons, such as they are, suggest the old “work hard and keep your nose clean and you’ll be a success” chestnut, and they must have rung a false note even then. But not a decade after WWII, it must have been a welcome balm to an uncertain public. People would have cheered for this guy. (Compare this to James Jones’ Some Came Running, 1957, which deals with many of the same themes, but much more plausibly, which was also a bestseller and quickly made into a movie.) The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit is a kind of prayer that everyone should have a life worth having with the minimum of resistance, since, one assumes from the war sections, penance has already been paid.

It’s not even that the characters are falsely drawn. The psychology is consistent and believable (mostly) and carries us through the various scenarios without challenging us with implausibility—not even shallowness, really. But then, fairytales must be psychologically true to have any utility. Its tactic, though—and tactic is, I believe, the correct word—is to take us up to the edge of genuine pathos, let us peek over the rim, and promise the harsh catharsis of reality…and then veer off and let things come out the way we might prefer. It teases, all through.

Some books are best read in their day or at certain times in one’s life. I’m not sure what I would have made of this had I read it at, say, 16. In terms of content, it has a certain historical interest (the prices discussed would rattle anyone’s suspension of disbelief today) but would pass today as YA but for the ages of the protagonists. It is rather well-written. 

Anyway, this one I chose to check off my list. Some of the others…who knows?