Not afraid of Willy Loman

You know what scared me off the path of sales long ago? It was Willy Loman. Now I look at Loman and realize I can never be him, not really. The ability to recognize market changes and adapt one’s sales approach, not just pretend the world is what I’d prefer and, above all, the capacity to reinvent a definition of work – these are the inoculation against Lomanism. Also, a hefty respect for reality – an epistemology of what is over the neurotic “I wish it were”. Willy Loman is about the suit making the man, the shoe shine being the key to business, the image over reality. Delusion. But also, there’s something I don’t remember in Death of a Salesman:: heart. It may seem like a nebulous concept, but it’s a kind of inner fire that Loman just didn’t possess and Arthur Miller didn’t tell us about. Willy Loman is not the icon of one possible future for me, anymore. I’m not afraid of becoming him, because I can’t accept the things that would take me there.