Underachiever

>> Selling Ben Cheever examines a writer’s
experience in the working world
by JULIET WATERS

Selling Ben Cheever: Back to Square One in a Service Economy may have started out as a book about the grey, sometimes depressing, sometimes amusing world of the service industry. But it ends up being a book about the grey, sometimes depressing, sometimes amusing world of the writer.
Son of John Cheever and husband to famed film critic Janet Maslin, author Ben Cheever is a living contradiction to anyone who believes that success is all about who you know. He’s not a bad writer, but he’ll never be a great one. Unable to get even one offer for his third novel, he was faced with three options: get a job as an editor, become a househusband, or try to deepen and share this experience of failure in some way.
The year was 1995. While technology stocks were soaring, other sectors were laying off middle-aged managers and executives in droves. Cheever decided to research and write a book about the experience of working in entry-level jobs in the service industry, where many of these people ended up. At the same time, Barbara Ehrenreich was working on Nickel and Dimed, her beautifully written and impressively researched book about her own experience amongst the working poor. What could the over-privileged Cheever add to this subject that wouldn’t be better said by a brilliant literary journalist?

In the end, he did sell the proposal to a friend at the Free Press, Adam Bellow (yes, the sons of famous writers do seem to flock together). And in the end, he has, against the odds, written a gem of a book.

Many things separate him from his fellow workers: money, class, race, opportunity. And there are many things that critics may dwell on to dismiss this book, like Cheever’s lack of focus and an undeniable element of narcissism. But the one thing he has going for him is an authentic sense of shame. This is one of those very rare books of entertaining essays that isn’t driven by disguised contempt.

Working for five years at jobs including security guard, sidewalk Santa, Borders Books employee, CompUSA salesclerk, telemarketer, Cosi Sandwich Bar linesman, trainee at Nobody Beats the Wiz, and the one job he’s actually any good at—car salesman—results in a consoling exploration of shame and empathy.

At Cosi’s, during many frustrating weeks of trying to keep up with the fast food pace, he earns the nickname Slow G, short for grandpa. Humiliated, he asks his manager whether there was ever anyone else as slow as he. “‘Plenty of people are slower,’ she said. ‘A million people are slower. Nobody else is so kind.’” Cheever emerges as such a fundamentally decent human being that much can be forgiven. By the end of five years in the service industry, he’s become more than just a voyeur in this world. He’s allowed it to change him.
Haunting this often hilarious and poignant book is not just the humiliation of the downwardly mobile middle-aged man, but also of the writer and his irrelevance. Cheever fills out many applications listing his actual job experience. Having published two novels barely ever registers a reaction. At Borders, frustrated with his anonymity, Cheever finally reveals his illustrious lineage.

“One young woman said she had looked me up and found out that I was a published writer with books in the store. I shrugged, and pawed the ground with my feet. I puffed up. I’ve warned you about how quickly I puff up. Then another woman chimed in. ‘Just don’t spend all your time checking your Borders ranking,’ she said, ‘the way the other writer did.’”
Selling Ben Cheever won’t change an unfair world, but it’s a worthy companion for those still struggling in it. :

Selling Ben Cheever by Benjamin Cheever, Bloomsbury, hc, 287pp, $41.50