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10/30/02

Finding the American Dream in the unlikeliest of places

By Jeff Minick
Selling Ben Cheever: Back To Square One In A Service Economy by Ben Cheever. Bloomsbury, 2001. $25.95 — 286 pp.


“To my mother,” Ben Cheever writes in the dedication to Selling Ben Cheever: Back To Square One In A Service Economy. “She’s as bewildered as I am by the discrepancy between admirable people and the people the world admires.”

Many things draw us to a book — the cover, the author, the title, perhaps even the thickness of the book or the type of font used on the pages. What drew me to Selling Ben Cheever was the above dedication. Since I count myself as also bewildered by this discrepancy, I expected to find a book that would be just as good as its dedication.

Cheever didn’t disappoint me. In this account of his life in sales and the service economy, Cheever gives readers a look inside jobs such as security guard, clothing salesman, computer and car sales, restaurant worker, and more. Cheever is a man who has experienced some hard times of his own, who has come down in life as he has gotten older; Cheever’s father was John Cheever, the novelist and one of America’s great short story writers. Cheever thus brings a sense of humility and an eye for justice to his look at the hard-working Americans who make up the retail sector of our economy.

Cheever is not working these jobs as so many Americans are, with a sense of desperation over debts and unemployment; his wife works, and Cheever could teach writing in college or preparatory school if he wished. But this freedom does allow him the ability to move around the job market, applying for work as a model (the test shoot, which he refused, cost $300); working as a sidewalk Santa collecting charity money (he didn’t get a hat); the Cosi Sandwich Bar (Cheever at 50 felt like an old man working among children; “they must think you’re some old white guy out of the Bowery,” a friend told him); worked in computer sales (he recommends not buying most of the insurance sold by electronic stores).

Cheever, who has written several novels and edited a book of his father’s letters, brings a sharp eye to these places of employment. When he works at the Halloween House, for example, he writes:


I wore black gloves and a black ski mask. Young couples would come in with the female in front. I’d burst out of my doorway, make the loudest sound I could manage. The girl would scream, throw her arms up in the air, and the boy behind her would grab her breasts. I saw this happen over and over again.


Cheever also displays his talents when he takes these sorts of details and adds them up into succinct generalizations.

The trouble then is not in the American Dream, but in our assumption that we’ve already made it real. We’re not there yet. Not by a long shot. We mustn’t give up. In the meantime we can’t forget that the woman serving us from the other side of the counter has a story, too. The American Dream is part nightmare. What goes up may also come down. Someday you and I might find ourselves saying, “Yes, sir, how can I help?” Or even, “Who’s the lucky person buying a car today?”...

The good news is that if you lose your job, you won’t lose your life.

The bad news is that there are people who will act as if you’ve died.


What works particularly well in this book is Cheever’s ability to understand both the position of the managers and the position of the workers. He understands that managers are under the gun to produce, to satisfy their own bosses, who must in turn satisfy stockholders. He has a lot to say, in an interesting way, about leadership styles and why they do or do not work.

Yet in the epilogue of the book Cheever finally lands on the side of the worker. Like most Americans, he fails to understand why corporation heads continue to earn millions of dollars per year while reducing their work force and throwing good people out of work. Having worked these jobs, Cheever finds himself with a new respect for Americans who work for minimum wage, or who work two or three jobs, or who work on commission.

Selling Ben Cheever is his act of homage to them.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville and can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)