Conformity's Crises

MAINSIDE (373 pp.)--Paul Mandel-- Random House ($4.95).

THE PANAMA PORTRAIT (242 pp.)-- Stanley Ellin--Random House ($3.95).

As a pejorative addition to the national vocabulary, "the organization man" is hardly more than a human ballbearing who aspires to become a big wheel. But as prop for U.S. fiction writers, he has become distressingly ubiquitous--mostly in the role of a puppet for potboilermakers, only rarely as the subtly realized, peculiarly American character he should be.

Two new books, Paul Mandel's Main-side, a skilled first novel set at a Florida naval air station, and Stanley Ellin's The Panama Portrait, which takes place on an island off South America, illustrate just how far-flung fictional organization men are becoming.

Shorebound Jargon. "I've been conforming since I was five," says Mandel's hero, Lieut, (j.g.) Samuel Marks. "That just about qualifies me as an organization man right there." Marks's organization man is anybody who will not rock the boat, either from fear of being noticed or hope of future pelf. But by the time Mandel is through with him, he has become a somewhat more complex conformist. At the outset Marks is a reservist with a wry eye for the shorebound "aye, aye" jargon of the peacetime Navy and a fondness for clean shirts and amenable girls. When a Navy pilot at Sims Field (near Jacksonville) commits suicide, Marks is detailed to make a routine investigation.

Dutifully plodding through standard Navy procedures in a detective-storylike narrative, he slowly comes face to face with a mother's grief, a Negro steward's blackmail of the dead officer, and the Navy's distaste for the bad publicity that his investigation seems likely to bring, pressure develops to cut the investigation short and just report "suicide, causes unknown," Marks fights back out of the simplest of motives--he is angry at being pushed around. But when both Navy and lawyers back down, the lieutenant triumphantly becomes commander of the situation, only to learn the moral anguish of command decision. Going ahead with a Navy hearing will hurt the mother--whose whole story Marks now knows--and will, in itself, accomplish nothing useful. Or will it?

Marks's final decision--to hold the hearing anyway--is no great surprise. What is refreshing is Author Mandel's subtly shaded exploration of questions so often answered in Boy Scout black and white: Can anyone be responsible to himself and to an organization at the same time? If a choice is forced, is it more important to help individuals or to see that society works properly?

Our Man in Santo Stefano. The Panama Portrait is a Madison Avenue Heart of Darkness with a shirt ad as hero. Ben Smith is the fella, a handsome Kansan who forsakes the "smell of failure" at home for the big city and a vast company, Seaways Industries. Smith thinks of himself as a thoughtful sort--there are days on end when he wonders if Seaways is really for him. But when his hero, General Manager James F. X. O'Harragh, picks him for an all-or-nothing assignment to corner the rock lobster market on tiny Santo Stefano, all doubt vanishes. If he succeeds in making the deal with the island's touchy ruling families he will be in charge--as a new vice president. If not, he is finished.

The island of Santo Stefano is the kind of loaded microcosm an experienced reader can smell a mile off. So, it happens, can everyone else. Santo Stefano's main source of wealth is a rich guano deposit that envelops it in an aroma visitors find intolerable but that the natives are used to. "It smells like money to them," Ben muses.

Ben is not repelled by the island's national custom--a test of courage in which peasants, competing for a cash prize, see how long they can hang from the neck before cutting themselves down. If they wait too long they strangle to death. It is, after all, a bit like bullfighting; and besides, to get the rock lobster contract he must seem simpdtico to the proud Bam-bas-Quincy family, whose wealth dominates the island. Finally, Ben Smith sees what Author Ellin's cluttered symbolism has been thundering about all along: U.S. commerce and Santo Stefano cruelty are all of a piece. The self-control demanded of the self-hanged men--who lose the contest if they begin to twitch and jiggle in the noose too soon--is precisely the quiescence Seaways demands of him against the hope of prospering in the company. O'Harragh has even made a secret bargain with Bambas-Quincy to marry off his psychotic daughter to unwitting Ben in return for the contract. Ben Smith runs back to New York, convinced by a disreputable art dealer that he should join him in the art business. The only virtuous life, the dealer (called Max Klebenau) explains, lies in helping the few artistic geniuses of the world.

Author-Ellin, an accomplished mystery writer now trying to go straight, had the makings of a good suspense yarn. But by locking himself into such pretentious symbolism, he begs to be taken seriously. And taken seriously he is a laugh. Ben Smith is not salvageable on any terms. The new freedom he is supposed to find in art dealing is merely a change of directors. When Dealer Klebenau runs out of money, he will no doubt con poor Smith into stealing the Mona Lisa--for art's sake, of course.

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