Peddler on the Road: Days in the Life of Willy Sypher

In Peddler on the Road: Days in the Life of Willy Sypher, Louis Daniel Brodsky sets forth a series of poetic vignettes about one Jewish traveling salesman's journeys as a representative for a major Midwest manufacturer of men's dress clothing, depicting the odyssey of a fifty-year career devoted to the road and to the small towns that define it. This novel, in fifty-two poems, is told both by an omniscient narrator and by Willy Sypher himself. We follow Willy's progress, from the time he joins Acme-Zenith Clothing, of St. Louis, in 1938, to his languishment in a nursing home, at century's end. In five chapters, each covering about a decade and a half, we see Willy advance into his prime, in the forties, fifties, and sixties full of "pep," tackling seven states, in two sales territories, and believing himself to be unstoppable and then suffer the inexorable loss of his energy, the shrinking of his client base, and the ultimate inertia of old age. This is not one man's story of achieving the American Dream, nor is it about his succumbing to the disillusionment of eking out a living; rather, it is the tale of a dogged, proud individual determined to stay even, survive, day to month to year, against fierce competition not only from others in his trade, not only from the rigors of road travel itself, but, perhaps most significant, from the forces of prejudice and intolerance. Reading Peddler on the Road, you will meet a genuine American hero, the unsung kind that, though all but faded into myth, once invigorated the national landscape with optimism and faith in the worth of the common man.