Wallace Stevens wasn't just one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, he was also an insurance executive. When he died, Stevens was vice president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. So where, one might reasonably ask, are his odes to the expense account? His sonnets on the ecstasies of business-class travel? The sad fact is, the inner life of the great American middle manager is woefully underchronicled.
Here to remedy that is Stanley Bing, whose roundly entertaining and surprisingly touching novel, You Look Nice Today (Bloomsbury; 291 pages), is set almost entirely in the carpeted corridors of a...