Wolfe's Hard Sell

THE image of a salesman at the door conjures up a vision both sympathetic and imposing. Not a bad analogy for leaving college and washing up on the shores of the real world.

America has always had a fascination with the salesman and with good reason. He is the one member of society whose efforts are perfectly tailored to the society around him. The salesman's interactions run the gamut from complete alienation to perfect compatibility, as quickly as a turn-down becomes a sale. He is a modern social prototype as profound as the warrior of antiquity.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, for example, uses the prism of salesmanship to capture the petty expectations of my parents' generation. Over the years, the travelling salesman has vanished from the cultural landscape, as abruptly as a stern shut of the front door. But the image of getting by on "shoe-shine and a smile," as Miller wrote, still remains. Tom Wolfe, today's Class Day speaker, is in part responsible for updating that American classic.

Wolfe, in his new novel, tells the story of a different type of salesman, Sherman McCoy, a Yale-educated bond trader. Wolfe's incarnation still resonates with the uniquely American dilemmas of social adjustment. McCoy too wants to be well-liked, although he defines success more in terms of the quantity of party invitations he receives than the number of smiles from a housewife.

And preposterously, McCoy's upscale life is still directed at the rather modest goal of meeting outrageous mortgage payments for a penthouse. Likewise his success on the job ultimately is governed by nothing more than the fabled characteristics of Willy Loman. (He gets his shoeshine, while he smiles--and continues to trade bonds, thanks to the technology that Wall Street firms have devised to polish shoes while brokers make frantic trades on the phone.)

IT is particularly apt that a writer with such preoccupations about the individual in society is speaking to a theatre full of graduates-to-be; for each graduate soon becomes his own salesman--whether in drafting resumes or in coming off well during a job interview.

Wolfe speaks to a graduating class whose career choices have been chastened by the stock market crash. But if the plummeting paper value of American industry has stripped off the veneer of vanity from the real world, the issues that motivate Wolfe's characters are still the same.

Yet what does Wolfe's dissection of New York City life tell us about the world so many graduates will enter? At best it belies a paradox.

Wolfe shows in his accurate, yet broad brushed treatment of the city that people's lives have a logic dictated by their birth and their profession. Whether a Loman or a McCoy, you still have to get your foot into the door. Yet, for their origins alone, a Loman and a McCoy shall never meet.

In Wolfe's future, differences of race and geography will become paramount. The City--New York City--has become two separate communities, with Blacks and whites rarely communicating. When they do communicate, it is usually through the media--and they have little to say to each other.

ALTHOUGH he has unlocked many of the inner workings of urban culture, Wolfe has drawn criticism for his treatment of minorities. Wolfe writes with palpable terror as his hero and mistress take a wrong turn and are forced to drive through a minority neighborhood. Some would call this telling it like it is, but the writer Howard Fast, for one, felt obliged to write to The New York Times to tell of his car breaking down in the South Bronx--and the helpful assistance he received from local residents.

Wolfe's exploration of the American urban experience helps chart a path outside the college gates, where all the world can sometimes seem a trade show. He exhorts us to cut through society's channels--lawyer, investment banker, janitor, teacher--and connect with each other.

It is troubling, however, that in the process of laying bare the Big Bad City, Wolfe's paranoid style becomes dominant. For anyone who wants to expose society's inner workings, Wolfe can serve as model--a negative one, that is. The hip cynical writer is a channel one should avoid.

Another acid-tongued writer once observed in a spasm of humanity that, "It is hard to laugh at people's need for romance and beauty"--a process Wolfe has made a career of. No matter what your avocation, you should take his advice. The best way to transcend the limits society imposes is to have sympathy when there is a knock on the door.