Beautee & the Beast

THE HUCKSTERS (307 pp.)--Frederic Wakeman--Rinehart ($2.50).

When Evan Llewelyn Evans, Beautee Soap tycoon, walked into conference, executives trembled and secretaries swooned. When Vic Norman took the dreaded job of handling Beautee's radio commercials for the firm of Kimberly and Maag, despotic Mr. Evans put on one of his most impressive acts. First, he spat on the conference table--to illustrate to Vic that no matter how disgusting a radio commercial may be, it's O.K. if it hits the spot. Then he emptied a carafe of water over the table (drenching the knocking knees of several hirelings)--to illustrate that any other kind of commercial is "all wet." Finally, he removed his dental plate and wagged it in Vic's face, growling menacingly: "I can see you've already got your teeth in our problem. See what I mean?"

Unlovable Evan L. Evans--who always wore a dirty straw hat and a bandanna, even when he drove in one of his Rolls-Royces--is the principal monster in Frederic Wakeman's sharp, comical novel about the monstrousness of present-day radio advertising. (Author Wakeman, whose first novel, Shore Leave, has averaged a comfortable thousand-a-week sale since 1944, used to write radio commercials for Campbell's Soup, Lucky Strike, RKO.)

Beautee Soap is the stake at which herds of miserable Radio Citymen are burned alive 24 hours a day, to appease both Despot Evans' sadistic love of power and Beautee, and their own terror at the thought of losing Beautee's ten-million-dollar advertising account.

Ulcers & Oedipus. Cynical Vic Norman--whose motto was: "If a thing is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well"--soon discovered that life with Kimberly and Maag was the nearest thing to hell on earth. In the rare intervals when he was not being Evans-ridden, desperate Partner Kimberly, who is The Hucksters' most enjoyable character, frenziedly dulled his stomach ulcers with benzedrine, double-Scotches, expensive prostitutes, and psychiatrists. "My psychiatrist tells me I'm a sex-maniac," he told Vic sadly; "but I told him that I doubted if bulls and rabbits had Oedipus complexes." Vic Norman was puzzled by this remark: "I must have missed a line," he said. "No, I [missed] two consultations," said Partner Kim.

The trouble was that Evan Evans took Beautee commercials as seriously as "the fifth act of Hamlet.'" "There's no damn difference between soaps," he told Vic frankly. "Except for perfume and color, soap is soap. . . . [The] difference is in the selling and advertising, [and] two things make good advertising. One, a good simple idea. Two, repetition. And by repetition, by God, I mean until the public is so irritated with it, they'll buy your brand because they bloody well can't forget it. All you professional men are scared to death of raping the public; I say the public likes it. . . ."

They Dream of Soap. Day & night, the public was raped with the good, simple Evans slogan: "Love that soap!" "It's my favorite bar!" Evans told Vic: "You got to eat, drink, sleep, and yes, by God, dream soap. Check?" "Check!" screamed back his underlings in desperate unison. Any one who failed to scream back "Check!" went out on his ear, Partner Kim told Vic. But Author Wakeman's main story is of how Vic gave Old Man Evans as good as he got. It is also the story of how Vic, despite years of cynicism and success, was helped by his own conscience and a heartfelt love affair to decide that no man worth his salt should waste his mind and time composing verbiage for creatures like Evan Llewelyn Evans.

The Hucksters is Book-of-the-Month Club choice for June, and M-G-M has paid $200,000 for a seven-year lease of the movie rights. It is dedicated "to those who sometimes awake suddenly to stare into the leisure of the night and consider with brief terror how their lives are spent." Least effective when it is most solemn, it reaches its top levels when sardonically demonstrating what Critic Clifton Fadiman calls "the yawning disproportion between the ingenuity of the means and the triviality of the ends" in advertising. Long-suffering radio audiences may also hope that The Hucksters' venom indicates a growing rebellion against the sins of advertisers. It might be what Evan Evans would call (tossing his hat out of the window, to illustrate) "a straw in the wind."

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