THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT - Sloan Wilson - Fiction

With the recent upsurge of interest in the 1950s, including the tv show MAD MEN, and the reissue of Richard Yates' REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, it's hard not to compare Sloan Wilson's novel to these examples. The same dissatisfaction with suburban life, concerns over salary and raising young children in a changing economy, and preoccupation with conduct in the war preside over MAD MEN and Yates's oeuvre as well as Tom and Betsy Rath. They're raising three children in a starter home, purchased after Tom's return from WWII as a successful paratrooper who nevertheless made some mistakes which he keeps from Betsy. He has a job at a charitable foundation, arranged for him by his wealthy grandmother, but it pays too little to give him hope of moving to a better neighborhood, so he applies for an ill-defined job at United Broadcasting Company. He is eventually appointed assistant to the head of UBC, a workaholic who represents the kind of man that many 50s careerists were supposed to become: obsessed with working to the point of not seeing his family for weeks at a time, he schedules appointments for every waking minute, is polite to a fault, and never seems to be able to rest or reflect on his situation, except under extreme duress.

In contrast, Tom Rath is only concerned about work insofar as it brings him the money he needs to repair his house, send his children to school, and approximate the standards of living to which he was accustomed, growing up. The minor intrigues of family life, including managing an inheritance from his grandmother, a disgruntled former housekeeper, and a new job with a vague and ever-larger set of responsibilities keep Tom busy, but the real knot at the heart of this novel is the question of how to raise children responsibly. Tom's boss, Ralph Hopkins, is only able to provide money for his daughter, and as a result, she is recognizable as a member of the popular heiresses of today, attracting men, continuously at parties and plays, and unable to articulate plans for the future beyond 'having a good time.' The accusation that Hopkins has failed his daughter by his absence from her life is best, and most damningly, articulated through his wife, who has grown so accustomed to having Ralph out of the house that she refuses his company even in the wake of her daughter's surprise elopement.

Tom sees his children nightly, commuting from New York City to their home in the suburbs of Connecticut, but the primary conflict in the story is Tom's reluctance to admit to his wife that while he was stationed in Italy during the way, he lived with a young woman, who may or may not have been a prostitute, and left her pregnant and alone when he was sent on to attack an island in the Pacific. News of his illegitimate child comes from an elevator operator at his new job, a man he served with during the war, who married his own Italian sweetheart and brought her to America with him, to be an elevator operator as well. Although it is obvious from the example of Hopkins that providing a child with money is not enough to consider oneself a parent, Tom's only concern is being able to get money to the child in Italy, first without his wife knowing, and finally without becoming a part of small-town gossip. Tom is neatly able to draw parallels between himself and Ralph Hopkins, in order to illustrate the striving Protestant work ethic by which he is reluctant to structure his life, but doesn't seem to realize that leaving his child in Italy while he went home to a secure future and the beautiful Betsy amounts to the same abandonment as Ralph Hopkins spending his time at work, instead of with his family. Tom looks back fondly on his time in Italy because of the continuous present in which he lived, every day fearing that he would be called to ship out to the Pacific, but at the same time faults Hopkins for not thinking about his future, and what would happen when he was forced to retire, or see his daughter grow up without him, or finally pay attention to his encroaching health problems. In a neat ending, Betsy accepts Tom's infidelity after a few hours' drive to collect her thoughts, and the Raths seem on their way to happiness, and the completion of their real estate money-making schemes. The future of Tom's Italian child, though, is less certain, and the money Tom promises to send is unlikely to convince the child that his father didn't abandon him with a sense of relief--the same sense of relief with which Ralph returns to the office, to his work, to ignoring the plights of his wife and daughter.