Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270137
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARTHA SLUD ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: COLONIAL BEACH LENGTH: Long
``The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,'' which historian David Halberstam calls one of the most influential novels of the decade, was a largely autobiographical account of Wilson's own struggle upon returning from World War II to find fulfillment in a pencil-pushing job at Time-Life Inc. Set in 1953, the novel shed an unflattering light on corporate and suburban life in the ``Fabulous Fifties.''
For Wilson, the gray flannel suit represented a material culture that rewarded conformists who put career above family. He wore those suits like a prison uniform, as does the book's frustrated protagonist, 33-year-old Tom Rath (as in anger), played in the movie version by Gregory Peck.
Wilson, now 75, long ago left behind life as the always-rushed commuting suburbanite who fought with his first wife over money and worried about keeping in step with the neighbors.
And, quite literally, those drab suits are gone, too.
The novelist, who lives with his second wife, Betty, on a 40-foot boat docked near the Potomac River, now proudly shows off the clothes he buys at a local thrift store. He points to a recent interview in Life magazine, in which he's shown wearing a serviceable brown, tweed jacket he bought second hand for $2.
``What money does to people fascinates me,'' said Wilson, a hearty, white-haired grandfather who looks the part of an aging mariner. ``I worried more about it when I had a lot of it than I did when I didn't have it.''
While dress styles have changed, the social and business pressures that affected the gray-flanneled men and their wives are just as fierce for today's yuppie couples, he said.
``In most big corporations, you're not going to go far unless you're a workaholic,'' he said. ``My four children ... they're all terribly overworked. It's the nature of young, ambitious people.''
``Gray Flannel,'' a hit with the public but disliked by many critics, has become one of the definitive mass-market novels of the '50s, said Stanley Corkin, an American literature professor at the University of Cincinnati. The book's tidy, happy ending - which Wilson now wishes he had made more complex - fit the upbeat attitude of the times, Corkin said.
``Gray Flannel'' was published the same year as another novel that looked at the effects of life in the suburbs, Jack Finney's ``Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'' The science fiction novel was, at its root, the story of suburbanites who had so lost their individuality that they could be taken over by evil alien vegetable pods and no one would know the difference.
Wilson was born in Norwalk, Conn., in 1920. He married a Boston debutante in 1941, then volunteered for the Coast Guard after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, he got a job as a newspaper reporter. He loved the work, but couldn't get by on the $50-a-week salary and went to work in 1947 for Time.
Instead of working for the newsmagazine, however, the aspiring writer found himself toiling for the house organ, FYI. He detested the job. He later was promoted to assistant to one of Time's founders, a man he liked, but Wilson found the job unrewarding and was frustrated by company politics.
It was all a far cry from the Coast Guard, where he commanded his own ship at age 23.
``It gave me a certain sense of dignity,'' he said. ``Then, when I went to work for Time, I discovered I was nothing.''
Wilson also was troubled by the situation of a neighbor, a highly decorated World War II airman who worked for an advertising agency and had to determine whether people would prefer a rubber spider or a tin frog as a toy in their breakfast cereal box.
``It haunted me,'' Wilson said. ``I thought, `What a terrible thing to reduce a man to.'''
Wilson earned about $1 million on ``Gray Flannel'' and made even more on his next effort, ``A Summer Place,'' which was turned into a movie best known for its theme song. He and his wife bought a bigger house, but Wilson says most of the book royalties were spent on lawyers, accountants and tax collectors. The marriage eventually fell apart.
Wilson then met Betty, a dancer 14 years his junior. The two lived on a boat in Florida and sailed the Bahamas before moving to Virginia several years ago. They live in Colonial Beach, a waterfront town near the home of their daughter, Jessica, and her family. Wilson also has three children by his first wife, who died several years ago. He has 10 grandchildren.
In 1984, Wilson published a ``Gray Flannel'' sequel, a critical flop. In between, he struggled with alcoholism and wrote two autobiographies and several more novels, which have had mixed success. His plots, written in a straightforward style, usually involve men who struggle with everyday problems - love, family and money.
In 1980, Wilson unexpectedly became involved in a large-scale problem - the Unabomber case. The terrorist sent a bomb inside Wilson's ``Ice Brothers,'' a 1979 coming-of-age tale based on Wilson's World War II service in the Greenland Patrol.
Wilson thinks the bomber only used the book because it was thick enough to hold a bomb, but some investigators have speculated that perhaps the self-described anarchist likens himself to an ``iceman'' of an earlier age. ``Gray Flannel,'' which gently probes the morality of big business, also may appeal to the anti-industrialist Unabomber, some have theorized.
The FBI has interviewed Wilson several times and recently asked him to look for any clues in the Unabomber's screed published last month in the Washington Post.
These days, Wilson is at work on a new novel. Titled ``Pedigree,'' it is a fictional account of the skeletons in his family's closet. He tries to come to grips with his father's anti-Semitism and the history of mental illness on his mother's side of the family.
``What I really want is to do a good job on this thing,'' he said. ``I'm trying to figure out what my life is all about.''
by CNB