[.ca] The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (ISBN 1568582463)

The man in the gray flannel suit:
Being young as I am it's difficult to imagine a time prior to one I currently live. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit gives vivid portrayal of a time sterotyped so much it's true image is blurred beyond actual recognition. Wilson overcomes this splendidly and shows sides of the fifties that is often forgot. This is due to his actual experience of the subject, and not to mention he wrote it then and not decades after. I really enjoyed the character Ralph Hopkins, Tom's boss. He was so hardworking and misunderstood. The technique of showing the story from several points of view (the worker, the housewife, the boss, ect...) adds a lot more depth, it gives you several angles of the time without seeming like too much info. This book has become one of my favorites, mainly due to it's perfect mirror image of our time (if some more modern updates were made), it really is a reminder of how history repeats itself. It also contains a subject that I'm quite fond of, psychology. Every character has his or her own special reasons for doing what they do, it really is interesting...

A pleasant find:
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.