Word: salesman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Vaino Antero Hoffren, 20, son of a Finnish watchmaker who moved his family to the U.S. when Vaino was ten. A political science student at San Diego State with only average grades, Hoffren had to work 25 hours a week as a drapery salesman to stay in school. But his two years' experience in U.S. poultry farming will be helpful in Colombia, and so will his dedication to a cause: "I was only a child, but I clearly remember my first impression of Communism-the horribly emaciated Finnish prisoners returning from the Russian prison camps...
...sounds uneasy when he does so, and he is often a disappointment to groups who come expecting to hear a conservative egghead. Goldwater himself is the first to confess that he is not a profound political thinker. "I'm not a philosopher," he says. "I'm a salesman trying to sell the conservative view of government...
...that role of salesman that Barry Goldwater has caught popular imagination. At his worst, Goldwater can stumble and stammer through carefully rehearsed texts. Fortunately, he is far more likely to toss away his prepared speech and make the same pitch in gutsy, give-em-hell language that puts the essence of his conservatism in metaphors of the man in the street. He talks neither up nor down to his audiences: he talks to them with obvious sincerity, and in so doing demolishes the stereotype of the conservative as the square in the Celluloid collar. For even his political opponents agree...
...think you're through, honey," she mapped to one salesman who meandered over his wares. Came a dress that appealed to her: "It's heavy as lead, but I love it." Came another, pushed too hard by the salesman: "Yes, I see how lovely it looks on the rack. You can just leave it there." At Alper-Schwartz she examined a pale green brocade: "That's a good mother-of-the-bride." At Ceil Chapman, she picked up a beaded taupe silk chiffon sheath (retail price: $395). At Estévez, she bought a few items that...
...danger of this stage is role diffusion; as Biff puts it in Death of a Salesman: 'I just can't take hold, Mom, I can't take hold of some kind of a life.' . . . Youth after youth, bewildered by his assumed role, a role forced on him by the inexorable standardization of American adolescence, runs away in one form or another: leaves schools and jobs, stays out at night, or withdraws into bizarre and inaccessible moods. Once he is 'delinquent,' his greatest need and often his only salvation is the refusal on the part of older youths, of advisers...