How to Sell

From the Publisher

“A darkly bewitching first novel.” —The New York Review of Books“A crackling debut . . . a bravura catalog of the scams and rackets that make up the luxury jewelry trade . . . Like a James Ellroy novel for people who read Spinoza's Ethics.” —Salon.com

“A noirish blast of a novel.” —Rolling Stone“Martin has a poetic sensibility. . . . He gives a mesmerizing appeal to the setting of an alexandrite necklace and the delicate artistry involved in shaping a diamond.” —The New Yorker “A strange, dirty, inside look at the jewelry business that reads like a manic buying spree or a cocaine jag.” —Jonathan Franzen

“A lesson in double-dealing—in business and in romance . . . This is one of those books that make you slap your forehead and marvel at the intricate lies that ensnare the unwary, even as you check to make sure your walled and your wits are right where you left them.” —O, The Oprah Magazine“How to Sell is outrageous, theatrical and slicker than oil. It tells the tale of Bobby Clark, a high-school dropout who joins his older brother at a jewelry emporium in Texas. It's a festival of drugs, diamonds and sex. Quality is nice, but any drugs, any sex and any diamonds will do, because anything can be spun into something better. Prostitution, a saleswoman turned hooker suggests at one point, is a more honest kind of living than the jewelry trade (at least in this book). ‘With what I do now,’ she tells Bobby, ‘I sleep well at night.’ . . . With How to Sell, Martin has written a gem of a story. Selling it probably won't be hard. The bigger challenge for Martin might be to learn how to stop selling.”—Louisa Thomas, Newsweek “How to Sell is, with memorably dark comedy, a virtual handbook on fraud. The world the Clark boys build for themselves and teeter precariously upon—one driven by wads of cash, adrenaline, an indiscriminate lust for sex and money, and a misunderstanding of what in life is really at stake—is a compelling setting for Martin’s propulsive storytelling. His narration feels cinematic, the sets and scenery popping off the page. With remarkable skill as the story spools out, Martin omits just enough exposition and interior insights to keep his characters shrouded in mystery, as if constantly reminding us that we’ll always be the customer, never the insider. Speaking of customers, prepare to be a much shrewder one after reading How to Sell.”—Rachel Rosenblit, Elle “A timely meditation on greed and the American Dream.”—Men.style.com “It’s a lean and mean book, perfect for those who distrust all this recent talk about change. The kind of novel—cool and dark—that goes with you to the beach and then keeps you thinking at night.”—Benjamin Alsup, Esquire “Crisp, cinematic . . . Martin writes with no-nonsense punch, detailing the schemes—fake certificates, ‘antiques’—shady jewelers have been running for centuries. If the sentences in How to Sell feel lived-in, well, that’s because the author himself is a former con man, borrowing liberally from the gem-scam life before going straight (He’s a philosophy professor now; go figure.) By the time you’re hooked on the book’s insidious plot twists, concerning sibling rivalry and a meth-addicted mistress who sleeps better hooking than she does selling Faux-lexes, you’re blissfully unaware you’re downing a metaphor: No commission can buy you a soul.”—Adam Baer, GQ “It's hard to imagine a more seductive blurb than that delivered by Jonathan Franzen for Martin's first novel. Here goes: ‘Dirty, greatly original, and very hard to stop reading.’ Sex, of course, may sell, but Martin's wicked take on money, the jewelry business and American passions could prove to have multiple pleasures. Oh, and by the by, Martin teaches philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and bases his book, at least in part, on an earlier life as a jewelry salesman in Texas.”—Kansas City Star “A tender yet hardboiled coming-of-age story, a vivid, sometimes philosophical portrait of yearning and greed, of human love and human spoilage—all of it mirrored in stripped-down, addictive prose. Clancy Martin has written a scary, funny blaze of a book.” —Sam Lipsyte  “The feeling you get from the moment you open Clancy Martin’s superb novel is one of inevitability. This is the inevitability of truth-telling, of tragedy, of the setup to a good joke, and, very possibly, the inevitability of the classic.” —Benjamin Kunkel

“How to Sell is a bleak, funny, unforgiving novel. It’s a little like Dennis Cooper with a philosophical intelligence, or Raymond Carver without hope. But mostly it’s like itself. It is about how we buy and sell everything—merchandise, drugs, sex, trust, power, peace of mind, religion, friendship, and each other. It’s written extremely finely, with wit and enviable self-control. A genuinely fresh, disconcerting voice.” —Zadie Smith  "A funny, quirky takedown of the American dream. A bastard child of John Updike and Mordecai Richler, How to Sell grabs you by the tuchus and doesn’t let go.” —Gary Shteyngart   

Publishers Weekly

A Canadian in 1987 goes to Texas and gets crushingly corrupted in Martin's sexy, funny and devastating debut. Bobby Clark is 16 when he leaves a dead-end setup with his single mother and grass-is-greener girlfriend, Wendy, and heads to Fort Worth to get into the fine jewelry business under the stewardship of his salesman brother, Jim. In no time, Bobby and Jim are snorting lines, Bobby's moving in on (and smoking crank with) Jim's mistress, Lisa, and getting a crash course in amazingly crooked business. Scams, bait-and-switch deals, bogus jewelry and startling treachery are day-to-day at the jewelry store, until the store's gregarious owner gets into trouble at the same time Bobby tries to save Lisa from a massive flame-out. Years later, Bobby's back in Fort Worth, married to Wendy (and with a child) and still in the jewelry business with Jim when Lisa reappears, engaged in an equally questionable if older profession. Bobby's helplessly honest narration is a sublime counterpoint to the crooked doings he's complicit in. Reading this is like watching one man's American dream turn into a soul-sucking nightmare. (May)

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Kirkus Reviews

Assured debut novel about the ethically tarnished jewelry trade. At 16, Bobby Clark steals his mother's wedding ring and sells it at a pawnshop. His next entrepreneurial move involves a case of class rings, and this theft gets him kicked out of school. His older brother Jim urges Bobby to leave Canada and join him at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange in Texas. His girlfriend seems eager to see him go, his long-gone father not very eager to see Bobby in Florida, so he doesn't have a lot of other options. Once he arrives in Dallas and starts work with Jim, Bobby quickly learns that the legitimate jewelry business is no more honest than his own amateurish crimes, just more elaborate. He learns to sell used Rolexes as new. He's introduced to coke and meth. He sleeps with his brother's girlfriend. While hardly an innocent when he arrives in Texas, Bobby retains several youthful illusions that dissipate as he sinks further and further into Jim's world. Martin (Philosophy/Univ. of Missouri), who won a 2007 Pushcart Prize for his story "The Best Jeweler," worked in the gem trade before taking refuge in academia. His philosophical and retail backgrounds both serve him well in this novel, which depicts a universe in which buying and selling have surpassed or replaced all other forms of human interaction. There's nothing shocking or even particularly surprising in Martin's sordid revelations; their verisimilitude is, sadly, quite convincing. A bleak, unpleasant story, very well told by a talented young writer. Agent: Susan Golomb/Susan Golomb Agency

The Barnes & Noble Review

Novelist Richard Powers has called the forces of commerce that shape our culture the "rhinoceros at the table." It's a rhinoceros steadfastly ignored by the majority of American novelists working today, many of whom have been in the comfortable embrace of the academy for most of their adult lives. Clancy Martin's How to Sell, a novel that gets its hands dirty with deal making and dollar signs, is an up-yours to the financially fastidious crowd. Beginning in the late 1980s and drawing from the seven years Martin spent in the jewelry business before earning his Ph.D. in philosophy, it's the tale of two Canadian brothers who move to Texas to stake their claim to the American Dream in diamonds and gold. Their lifestyle of drugs and matter-of-course sex may put some in mind of Jay McInerney's 1984 tale of youthful debauchery set in New York, Bright Lights, Big City. But while the arcs of the stories bear some striking resemblances, How to Sell makes that earlier cocaine-laced tale read as innocently as Good Night, Moon.

The story is narrated by Bobby Clark, who is 16 years old when the book begins. Bobby is no innocent, Martin is at pains to show: On the first page he steals his mother's wedding ring to buy his way back into the affections of a girlfriend. Expelled from his high school, Bobby goes to live with his older, married brother, Jim, who works at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. Jim picks Bobby up at the airport in a rented limo and offers him cocaine, and Jim's girlfriend, a beautiful jewelry saleswoman named Lisa, runs her fingers flirtatiously through Bobby's hair. They drive directly to the store, stopping only to buy Bobby clothes suitable for the sales floor.

Bobby receives a swift initiation into the high-rolling world of luxury peddling, which, as Lisa observes much later, is "like Miracle-Gro on your failings." Many of Bobby's lessons are relayed in dialogue so satisfying it calls up the linguistic gunfire in David Mamet's Glenglarry Glen Ross. The process of Bobby's business education is by far the most enjoyable part of this book, which threads colorful scenes of conscienceless wheeling and dealing with opaque human storylines. Bobby begins by setting all the Swiss watches at ten minutes to two, the position that shows them to best advantage in the display case. He soon demonstrates the same gift for salesmanship that distinguishes his older brother in the eyes of the calculating store owner, Mr. Popper, and finds himself selling Rolexes and appraising diamonds -- if he can manage to function after another night of alcohol, drugs, and sex with Lisa, with whom he quickly begins an affair.

In the commercial world Martin describes, value is a pact between buyer and seller, who choose to see the gem before them in the same way long enough to settle on a price. The business is based on deception. Yet the coin of the realm is trust. Describing his earnest sales pitch to the first customer to whom he sells a Rolex, Bobby remarks, "You spend the rest of your career trying to recapture that innocence. Sinlessness and candor like that is a fierce advantage." The tricks of the trade -- relabeling white gold as platinum, filling in flawed diamonds so they look unblemished to the casual eye, giving a customer's watch brought in for a cleaning to another client who needs a little something to sweeten the pot on a big sale -- are enough to make you think twice about darkening the doorstep of a jewelry store.

As the Clark boys scramble to make the next big deal and put in the punishing hours that will keep them in good with the boss or, later, keep their own business afloat, they're like lampreys dependent on the truly wealthy -- occasionally living like the rich but not, in the end, like them at all. And part of the reason they're not rich, Martin suggests, is that there's something woefully impractical about a salesman. Late in the book, a jeweler tells Bobby, "A salesman is the opposite of a businessman, Bobby. A businessman cares about the practical details of life. A salesman is an artist. He can't tie his own shoelaces. He lives on tomorrow. He's a cloud-and-sky guy, a rainbow man. He can't hold money. He can't make a goddamn dollar out of four quarters and a can of glue, if you want to hear the truth of it."

Bobby's obsession with Lisa, his complicated love for a brother whom he can't bring himself to trust, and the two men's relationship with their increasingly demented father are the human elements that should anchor this tale. But the ins and outs of the business are what keep us reading, and, in the end, they offer what little insight we get into the humans behind the deals. The deaths that come at the end of the book -- one the result of a needlessly graphic act of violence -- arrive with a dull thud rather than the resonance we would feel if we were permitted any kind of real access to their emotional lives.

We don't have to like Bobby Clark to want to invest in him, but we do have to feel that we come to understand him. Martin has a gift for decrypting immediate human agendas -- the fraught conversation among the store's management after an inside-job theft should be taught in writing classes. But the characters' deeper motives and fidelities are impossible to know -- Bobby's perhaps most of all. He idolizes Jim but sleeps with his girlfriend. He loves Lisa, but the basis of that love appears to be coke and meth, a lot of sex, and a couple of beautiful smiles. He doggedly pursues the woman who eventually becomes his wife but holds himself aloof from her.

Martin, currently a philosophy professor at the University of Missouri, is fascinated by deception -- he has written or edited several philosophical books on the subject. Periodically, Bobby's character mentions that he is reading Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer. But this world of moral concerns -- and the impulse that would propel Bobby toward it -- is bafflingly absent from what he reveals of his inner life. He's withholding quite a lot -- which may work to sell a diamond, but not a story. In the end, Bobby can't quite close the deal. --Sarah L. Courteau

Sarah L. Courteau is literary editor of The Wilson Quarterly.