The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (novel)

Tom and Betsy Rath live in a rundown house in Westport, Connecticut in 1953. They have three children (two girls and a boy) and money problems. Tom is 33 years old, a Harvard graduate, and works at a Manhattan charitable organization.

Tom barely survived as an Army paratroop officer during World War II, having fought in both the European and Pacific combat theaters; he had an extramarital affair in Italy during the former. He has haunting flashbacks of the affair, as well as his combat experiences; he killed 17 men in combat, including accidentally killing his friend with a hand grenade in the heat of battle. His stay-at-home wife knows only that Tom has somehow "changed" since the war.

One day while reflecting on the inadequacy of his house, Tom runs into a friend who works at the United Broadcasting Corporation, a New York-based television network. This friend encourages Tom to apply for a new opening in public relations. Tom gets the job working for Ralph Hopkins, the top man at the network, an empire-builder surrounded by politicking yes-men. Hopkins is set to propose the establishment of national mental health services to a group of physicians and offer his own prestige and network toward that end. Tom must figure out how his boss can best present the proposal so that the doctors will rise in unison and appoint Hopkins to spearhead the campaign.

Hired on a six-month probationary basis, Tom reports to a humorless game-player who rejects five different drafts of the speech and ends up substituting one of his own. Hopkins is satisfied, but Tom persuades him that the approach is all wrong, that it misrepresents Hopkins' qualifications to head the campaign. Tom's approach is more sensible and Hopkins is impressed. Additionally, Tom reminds Hopkins of his own son, who was killed in combat.

In the end, Tom sees how his boss's marriage and family life have been ruined by overwork, so he turns down a high-pressure position involving travel in order to work normal hours and spend more time at home.

Views of Westport, Conn. in the 1930s–50s

• The fraudulent scheme of the caretaker of Tom's late grandmother, who forged a will in an attempt to inherit the deceased woman's home.
• Hopkins' estrangement from his daughter, who quits school to elope with an undesirable man.
• Tom's wartime affair resulted in a son conceived in Italy, whose mother suddenly contacts him to seek monetary support at a most inconvenient time. With no understanding of the horrors of war, Betsy becomes furious upon learning of this secret and becomes estranged from Tom. However, she comes to understand that mutual emotional support, not just mutual ambition, bind wife and husband.

The book was largely autobiographical. It drew on Wilson's experiences as assistant director of the U.S. National Citizen Commission for Public Schools. The character of Ralph Hopkins, the high-ranking network executive, was based on Roy Larsen, Wilson's real-life boss at Time Inc.

The novel became a bestseller. "Man in the gray flannel suit" entered the popular vernacular and the symbol has continued to appear for decades in references of sociologists to America's "discontented businessman". Columnist Bob Greene wrote in 1992 that "[t]he title of Sloan Wilson's best-selling novel became part of the American vernacular—the book was a ground-breaking fictional look at conformity in the executive suite, and it was a piece of writing that helped the nation's business community start to examine the effects of its perceived stodginess and sameness."^[2]

The book was re-issued in 2002 with a foreword by a contemporary author Jonathan Franzen.