Books: Sales Talk

THE SALESMAN—John Herrmann—Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

Bob Crawford, traveling salesman for a picture-frame firm, always hoped to make more than $30 a week, but never got much more, even after his boss bought him an automobile. His wife moped in her mother’s big, heavily mortgaged house in Brooklyn, blamed herself when their baby died, blamed Bob when, after a gloomy weekend, he seemed glad to get back on the road. Bob took to padding his expense account, almost slept with a shopgirl in Boston, began to feel trapped. But when the old lady died, they found an insurance policy.

John Herrmann was a traveling salesman himself at 15, studied law, took up journalism before he married Josephine Herbst (Nothing Is Sacred, Money for Love), published a book, What Happens, in Paris in 1926. In 1932 he shared with Thomas Wolfe a $5,000 prize in a Scribner’s short-novel contest. Herrmann’s work, Big Little Trip, was about a jewelry salesman who oversold his customers. The Salesman suggests that its author is oversold on salesmen.