A Modern Snake-Oil

Dr. Modesto's revelation is a modern snake oil cure a wild blend of How to Win Friends and influence People with what Riesman calls the "other-directed" personality. Bottled under the label Contralism, author Harrington's idea is not a now one, but it is a vivid satire on the life of the conformist and his descent into modiocrity.

In a whirling panorama of slant hatted insurance salesmen, cow-like women, bull-like men, and smiling madmen, Harington weaves a crazy pattern of the present. His starting thread is Hal Hingham, an agent of Arcadia Life, afraid of sales prospects, and frightened of his bulbous, seductive landiady. The image of Hingham the failure is obvious: "The broken, abandoned pencil-sharpener had depressed him. It reminded him of himself. People didn't care how they treated mass-produced equipment." He was a nobody in world that seemed complex and cruel. Even at childhood his father appeared one day only long enough to drag him, kicking and screaming, into the Boy Scouts."

$7 from Nebraska

The secret to Hingham's sudden rise are Dr. Modesto's Revelations, mailed for $7 from Nebraska. The whole solution is abandonment of individualism, becoming the Average Fellow, the person who reflects all and so is loved by all. Dr. Modesto recounts, "I fell into an ectasy of mediocrity. Whatever the others did, I did... To survive we must become happy nothings." Hingham has to work and behave centrally, for this is the life of Centralism: "Everytime you wash your car it always rains, if that's the general story. Throw salt over your shoulder. Knock on wood."

In the city of Bradford Hingham tested his new power, and here Harrington's bizzare satire is at its best. Hingham changes his personality to fit each prospect, and meets with no failure. Soon "It was a frenzy, a perfect orgy of setting in which, finally, he did not speak at all but had only to make a convulsive gesture and the people accepted the contracts he thrust at them."

Using Hingham as the central actor, Harrington sets up a series of charades that deftly mock the American scene. Yet there is little to tie the various charades together save their incisive cleverness. Each character type is presented and then lost in the rush of the following actor. Even Merko the Human Fly, an individualist, is left suspended, in this case on the Eiffel Tower.

Perhaps the connecting link is the dilemma of becoming a perfect Centralist: everyone likes him, and thus he is successful--but success makes the Centralist different, and, therefore, not a Centralist. Harrington slowly uncovers this trap for Hingham, battering down athletes, public relations men, and psychiatrists in the process. It is a disturbing, but often amusing game.