flannel suits or denim jeans?

"The man in the gray flannel suit is the man that used to wear olive drab in the army."
-commentary on the film version of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit



I just finished reading The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), by Sloan Wilson and On the Road, the original scroll (1957).



In my edition of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit both Jonathan Franzen in his intro and Sloan Wilson in his cite Kerouac as a counterpart to the man in the gray flannel suit. Kenny's borrowing my Wilson (as a Mad Men fan I really thought he ought to read it). So, forgive me for not directly quoting it.

In On the Road, Neal Cassady says, "[N]o matter where I live my trunk's always sticking out from under the bed, I'm ready to leave or get thrown out." (352) This is kind of glamorized in the beat ethos...the idea of always being ready to embrace the unpredictable, to expect it...and to anticipate chaos is almost to court it, isn't it? The men in the gray flannel suits are the opposite, right? Craven capitalist who want the comforts of home, wife, family, a dog, a reliable car...a drink at the end of the workday and the occassional vacation in a Vermont shack. Is that complacency? Is that bad? Kerouac and Cassady seem to say yasss...yass...yass...that's bad.

Kerouac writes, "I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good times, work, faith, and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middleclass philosophy out of it." (280)

Are Kerouac and Rath (protagonist of Wilson's novel) really all that far apart?

Kerouac writes, "I was lost. All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good bid mainline shot of M. and advertising executives were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester--but without hangovers." (279)

So, many people assume Rath is an ad exec, but he's not, so what is Wilson's point? The man in the gray flannel suit is sometimes more...sometimes...maybe all the time, he's human. He yearns; he's dissatisfied...he plays the mandolin. I know I'm oversimplifying, but I think Wilson humanizes the 9-5 worker for the intellectual, though the intellectual largely ignored this. The workplace does stifle Rath because he feels like he has to lie to succeed but he realizes, through the prompting of his wife, that honesty is more important than anything. And he still succeeds. Which is why it was so well-suited for Hollywood. (ah, cynicism!)

Anyway, both Kerouac and Wilson are writing about authenticity and masculinity in post WWII America.

Opening up a book of Confucius's aphorisms today, I found this, "The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property."

Why do intellectuals so often hate advertising and consumerism, unless these two are dripping with irony?

Anyway, Neal Cassady is probably a great guy to date when you're young and looking for a little fun, as long as you're on the pill (but that wasn't available until 1960). But, Tom Rath is probably the guy you'd rather settle down with. At least he only has one illegitimate child to support...what'd Neal have, 3, 4?