The End of the Book Read Online Free

cleverness and art, anything to distract from the argument that the product is essential and no reasonable human being should be without it. “Advertising is sales on the page,” he said. “Pretty pictures and rhymey jingles and silly made-up characters are useless because they make only the most general claims.” George took umbrage. “Perhaps you’ve heard of Tidy Town?” But Kennison was unim-pressed. “The tidy farmer, the tidy grocer, the tidy maid and the lot? No offense, sport, but Tidy Town will soon fall off the map.”
    George had bristled at this prophecy, but he should have been alarmed when Lazar failed to defend him and allowed the meeting to go on until close to midnight. George couldn’t have known then what he was beginning to realize now, that advertising was changing, that the soft sell, which had made his career thus far, would soon be eclipsed by Prove They Need It , that the meeting George himself had made possible would go down in business history and launch the agency so far into the firmament that one day Alfred J. Lazar would become known as the father of modern advertising.
    George put on his coat and hat and left his office. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he wanted to get out of the building and feel the December air on his face. On his way to the elevators he nearly sailed into Lazar, who was stepping out of the Service Department into the hallway. Everyone dreaded the Service Department, where an enormous wall chart displayed due dates for the firm’s assorted campaigns. Lazar was notorious for setting the dates weeks ahead of clients’ schedules in order to keep his workers under continuous deadline pressure. This, and his habit of firing 10 to 20 percent of his employees every couple of years in what he called a regenerative act of nature, kept everyone buzzing with anxious efficiency. It had been a while since the last purge, and George had grown used to the look on his peers’ faces: you might be dead weight, but certainly not me .
    â€œWhere are you going in such a hurry?” Lazar asked.
    George stood a head taller than his boss, but Lazar had dark eyes under a heavy brow and a thistly posture that magnified his presence. “I was headed to lunch,” George said.
    â€œBut it’s four in the afternoon.”
    â€œI’ve been so busy I plumb forgot to eat.”
    Lazar rubbed his chin. Slender and young-looking for forty-nine, he was obsessed with grooming and had been known to interrupt meetings in order to run down to the barbershop for a midday shave. “Well, I want you back here soon, d’you understand? I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”
    Those words wedged in George’s mind like pebbles in a shoe, and as daylight dissolved into the smoky haze that forever hung over the city they gathered a sense of foreboding. He walked up State Street amidst the mad scurry of workers and Christmas shoppers and tried to imagine what Lazar might want to tell him. Nuvolia had recently signed a new contract running through the end of next year, and George had taken this as a vote of confidence that though sales had been slipping of late his future was secure. So many products had entered the market—cleanliness had become the imperative of the age—it was all one could do to keep up. But what of that overheard conversation: We need scores of Clyde Kennisons here ? George was a writer, not a salesman, and couldn’t imagine being remade into a bloodless advertising machine. Lazar knew this, and it was his company, so what would keep him from saying to George, perhaps this very afternoon, Thank you for your time, but we no longer need your services?
    There was a contest within George between the pursuit of art and financial security. His mother was a failed artist, his father a failed businessman, so George had much to compensate for. Elizabeth Willard had wanted to be an actress