The faceless figure on the dust jacket of Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is apparently supposed to imply Everyman. The title of the novel and the publicity that preceded its publication seem to insist that Tom Rath, the novel's hero, is universal, at least to the minimal extent that he represents the young veterans struggling suavely to make their mark in the world of Madison Avenue.

Briefly, the plot is this: Tom Rath, the assistant to the director of the Schanenhauser Foundation, is struggling to keep his wife and three children on seven thousand dollars a year …; he resigns from the foundation to become special assistant to Ralph Hopkins, the head of the United Broadcasting Corporation, a position which he leaves after a bit of soul searching, a sacrifice that is rewarding both spiritually and materially.

These are the bare bones of the novel...