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    The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
    The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
    The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

    Written by Sloan Wilson

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Universally acclaimed when first published in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit captured the mood of a generation. It was a national bestseller that was made into an award-winning film, it was translated into twenty-six languages, and its title has become a permanent part of our cultural vocabulary. Today, it is more relevant than ever.

    Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race-what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out. At once a searing indictment of corporate culture, a story of a young man confronting his past and future with honesty, and a testament to the enduring power of family, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a deeply rewarding novel about the importance of taking responsibility for one's own life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 17, 2010
    ISBN9781400188727
    The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
    Author

    Sloan Wilson

    Sloan Wilson (1920–2003) was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, and graduated from Harvard University. An avid sailor, he joined the US Coast Guard shortly after Pearl Harbor and, during World War II, commanded a naval trawler on the Greenland Patrol and an army supply ship in the South Pacific. Wilson earned a battle star for his role in an attack by Japanese aircraft and based his first novel, Voyage to Somewhere, and two of his later books, Ice Brothers and Pacific Interlude, on his wartime experiences. In 1955 he published The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, a classic portrait of suburban ennui heralded by the Atlantic as “one of the great artifacts of popular culture in the 50’s.” It was adapted into a successful film, as was its bestselling follow-up, A Summer Place. The author of fifteen books, Wilson was living with his wife of forty years, Betty, on a boat in Colonial Beach, Virginia, at the time of his death.

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    Reviews for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

    4.5/5

    15 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Quick easy fiction. 1950s piece about morality of advancement and struggles of the salaryman. A happy ending, for once!
    • 4/5
      Didn't quite live up to its early start, but well worth reading, nonetheless. I finally got around to it after having picked it up in a train station in Philadelphia about two years ago.
    • 4/5
      Tom Rath is a man who is living a life of lies. Everyday he puts on his grey flannel suit to commute from his Connecticut home to work in New York where he blends in with all of the other men doing the same thing, all wearing their grey flannel suits. And Tom feels the pressure that this conformity brings, the need to get the better job, to be just like the neighbors and like the same things. When Tom gets a new job working for the president of the Universal Broadcasting Corporation, Tom begins to realize how trapped into the conformity around him he is. Tom struggles as he deals with the inheritance of his grandmother's estate, conflicting directions from his bosses, and the specter of a past indiscretion coming back to haunt him and ruin the cultivated life of conformity that he has created. Sloan Wilson's book of 1950's conformity still resonates today. The pressures that Tom faces to fit in, to not step outside the narrow vision of society of what is right and wrong still has a place today. Tom Wrath is an angry man, who is running away from his past, and unwilling to take risks. He sees everything from a class half empty perspective. He is countered by his wife, Betsy, who struggles with the same expectations of conformity, but who is willing to take risks to make their lives better. A lot of the differences between Tom and Betsy come from their experiences during WW2. Tom fought as a paratrooper in Europe and the Pacific, killing 17 men (including his best friend in an accident) and fathering an illegitimate child. These events are things that Tom refuses to talk about; they are part of another life, but they constantly dwell upon Tom's thoughts and shape his view of the world. Despite being written over 60 years ago, and set in a very different time and place of America, I really enjoyed Wilson's story of Tom and Betsy Rath. Their story resonated with me and I thoroughly enjoyed the character development of both Tom and Betsy. They serve as counter-points to each other, and it is only through being forced to understand each other that they are able to overcome the difficulties that life seems to throw at them. By the end of the book Tom Rath is a very different person, more sure of himself, more at ease with who he is and the events and people that have made him the person he is now. Betsy, while getting less of a character treatment than Tom, also grows as she understands more about who her husband is, and how the war made him a changed man. And while the war changed her some too, the differences are great and she must come to terms with them.I only have a couple of problems with the book. Wilson writes from an omniscient third-person POV, and in several chapters the reader is forced to head jump from character to character in the scene. This is a bit distracting. I also wish that more time was given to exploring Betsy and her own thought - especially on the critical point when she learns of Tom's infidelity and his illegitimate child born to an Italian woman. Betsy makes a large change in her character, but it mainly happens off stage and we don't see the struggle she goes through to decide to accept Tom and his decision to support the child. Considering we are seeing the thoughts of many other characters not showing us the struggle Betsy is going through felt like a let down. Overall I recommend The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. Sloan Wilson's story still has power today to show us how life's events can change and affect a person. It is also a wonderful look at an era of American history that is little covered today. Written in the 1950's, the novel today feels like a well-research historical fiction, and being able to glimpse the world of 60 plus years ago was interesting. The audio production I listened to was narrated by Patrick Lawlor, who does a good job of bringing Tom Rath to life. I had previously heard him narrating a X-Files novel, so at first I could only hear Fox Mulder instead of Tom Rath, but that was more me than Patrick. His characterizations are well done and helped to make the characters stand out.
    • 3/5
      Reads like Richard Yates-lite.
    • 4/5
      I must have read this book when I was sixteen or so, and remember it made an impression on me, as did the movie. The message I took away from the book was that a job was for making enough money to live and interesting life and not a way of life itself. This message came back to me in my thirties, when I began to search for a way of making a living based on what I liked to do. Most of the plot escapes me now, but I remember a scene in which the protagonist explains to his boss that he must turn down a high pressure, demanding promotion because he does not want his job to dominate his life.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book, but I have to say, I wasn't overly thrilled with the ending. As others have said, it was a little too pat for my liking...everything works out and everyone lives happily ever after. It wasn't enough to completely ruin the book for me, but I was disappointed by the end.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Tom Rath and economic survival in the 1950s era. Tom's wife, Betsy and their three children want the good life. Tom is determined to give it to them, even if it means slogging to work doing a job he doesn't completely enjoy. When a new prospect for employment pops up Rath jumps at the chance to move up the ladder but it is not without consequences.The Man in Gray Flannel epitomizes the proverbial meaning of life in a material world. It is also a study of 1950s conformity and climbing the corporate ladder. You have one man who is a slave to his workaholic lifestyle and is miserable because of it while another man is angry because he can never get ahead. Tom's boss, from the outside, projects an image of ease and calm amidst his wealth while Tom encounters roadblocks in every aspect of his life. The new higher paying job is not what he thought it would be. Secrets from his time as a solider in World War II will not stay buried. His wife wants more and more. Even the seemingly straightforward last will and testament of his grandmother's estate doesn't seem to be in his favor. Confessional: the odd thing is, despite all of Tom's setbacks and struggles, I couldn't entirely feel for him. I felt more for his boss.
    • 4/5
      At the end of WWII men came back home and tried to adapt to civilian life and the big dreams they had before they were soldiers. Tom Rath is one of these men and author Sloan Wilson is a master at creating a character determined to make a decent home for his wife and three children; trying to get ahead in big business and make as much money as he can; and eventually questioning his motives and what he really wants from life. Originally written in 1955, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT is a penetrating look at work and family life that is still quite meaningful today. I read this after seeing the film starring Gregory Peck and enjoyed them both. Might make an interesting reading group selection
    • 4/5
      Book Circle Reads 158Title: [THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT]Author: [[SLOAN WILSON]]Rating: 4* of fiveThe Publisher Says: Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everthing going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race - what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out. At once a searing indictment of corporate culture, a story of a young man confronting his past and future with honesty, and a testament to the enduring power of family, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a deeply rewarding novel about the importance of taking responsibility for one's own life.My Review: 1955. That is, if you're math-challenged, 58 years ago, and the year that Simon & Schuster published this book. So Wilson was writing it in, it's safe to say, 1953 (60 years ago). And this is what Wilson said:Money, I need money, {Tom} thought. If they don't build a new public shcool, I should be able to afford a private school. I should get everything but money out of my head and really do a job for Hopkins. I ought to be at work now....Money, Tom thought. The housing project could make money, but it depends on re-zoning, and Bernstein says we shouldn't ask for that until they vote on a new school.A new school, he thought---so much depends on that! ... I should work for a new school, and I should work harder for Hopkins, and I should be making plans for our housing project. Where did I ever get the idea that life is supposed to be anything but work? A man's work should be his pleasure---I shouldn't expect anything more.Tom Rath has just been to see the overcrowded public school his daughters have to attend because, unlike his own father, he can't afford to put them in a private school. He muses on these thoughts while waiting for a late commuter train into the city, where he will take on a lowly personal assistant's position and, in the process, displace a number of female employees from their physical space.Sixty years since Wilson was penning these words, and not that much has changed. Now, of course, it could easily be a mom having these platform reveries, because we've been sold the bill of goods that nannies and au pairs are plenty good enough to raise the kids we've had but don't feel like raising even if it means NOT having a home theater, six DVR-equipped TVs, and each kid with an unshared Xbox. If mom's better at business, dad, YOU stay home and raise those people you engendered. Read to them, make them a snack after carpool, help with their homework. Hiring out parenthood sorta makes it pointless, doesn't it?Ahem.Me and my rants.Wilson's book analyzes the sources of Tom's inner discontent as disconnection and materialism. I agree. The alarm bell sounded by this, and by the 1956 movie, went unheeded despite the fact that both were hugely popular and successful in their own spheres. (The movie was as good as the book, for once.)At every turn, MONEY the getting and spending of, obsesses and defines Tom. His wealthy grandmother is being cared for by a greedy granny-nanny, and the hijinks appertaining thereto are most instructive for today's audience. Tom's boss, the venal and piggish Hopkins, plays out before Tom's increasingly revolted gaze his own probable future of alienated kid (extra probable because his three are TV obsessed brats), estranged wife, and grasping mistress(es). Then things get complicated when a wartime indiscretion with an Italian lass provides a surprise to Tom's unsuspecting wife.Wilson wrote of his own time. Change the props, update the clothes, and make it about Betsy the wife, and nothing much has changed.I'm sad about that. So much needless hurt caused in this world from sheer, wasteful greed for MORE when there's more than enough right in front of these hungry-souled people.
    • 4/5
      Tom Rath is a young family man interested in doing the best for his wife Betsy and their three children. So he dons his gray flannel suit to head off to work in New York every day, eventually deciding to throw his hand in for a better job so that they can afford a bigger house and send their kids to college.As you might be able to tell from the description, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit isn’t exactly a thrilling page-turner. Its story is mostly that of mundane everyday things that we’ve all faced at one time or another – not having a big enough salary, worrying about money, finding a good job, pleasing the boss at the new job, falling behind on home repairs, and struggling with marital and parenting woes from time to time. Eventually, some things happen that are more outside the norm for many like inheriting a boondoggle, having a will contested, recalling traumatic war experiences, and facing the possibility of an affair coming to light. But, all in all, this is a book that deals with human experiences that are not incredibly out of the ordinary and does so in a pretty straightforward way. To me, the most interesting parts of the book were the juxtaposition of Tom’s wartime experiences and his rather dull life now (or even compared to Betsy’s letters at the time of what was going on back home). Some of the book’s best quotes come from here, including: - “It had been almost like a suburban community, with the men all working for the same big corporation.”- “How strange that after all the long months of killing, there would be finally, perhaps, the birth of a child, and that this would be the one thing he had done in the last two years which could conceivably lead to trouble.”- “How curious it was to find that apparently nothing was ever really forgotten, that the past was never really gone, that it was always lurking, ready to destroy the present, or at least to make the present seem absurd … ”- “It is strange, he thought, that almost always there is so much irony in success.”Overall, though I found the book just “okay” at best. It was rather plodding at the beginning and then went off on weird tangents at other times, looking very closely at the lives of other characters for brief moments and then not coming back to them. None of the characters were particularly all that compelling, although I did find myself rooting for Tom on some occasions. His wife Betsy, with her seemingly unabated consumerism and throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude sometimes tempered by a holier-than-thou attitude, irritated me a great deal. After spending so much time with this book and looking at some events in sometimes excruciating detail, the ending did not feel conclusive at all with many things still up in the air. My copy of the book was the audio version, which had a good reader who helped bring this rather flat book more to life. This version had an introduction from Jonathan Franzen, which noted some interesting critical readings and interpretations of the book, although I didn’t really find them to ring true myself. The book also ended with the author’s introduction to the 1983 edition, in which he explained he would be finally writing a sequel. Not liking this book and its characters enough to invest in a second book, I only read the Wikipedia summary of it, and I have to say it sounds even more disappointing.