Book Review – Cash McCall
Cash McCall by Cameron Hawley is best known as a 1960 film starring James Garner and Natalie Wood, but the film was based on a book, first published in 1955. This book is long out of print, but I bought a used copy through Amazon. I haven’t seen the film, but I understand that it is essentially similar to the book, with some detail changes.
Cash McCall is interesting for the person who wants to live their own life because it has themes of freedom running deeply through it and contrasts characters who pursue growth and freedom with those who are constrained by habit, the need for social approval and win/lose outcomes. Whilst not a philosophical work in the same way as Atlas Shrugged, it covers some similar themes, and this book review highlights the major ideas in this novel.
Plot Summary
Cash McCall, the hero of the story, is a mysterious businessman who buys and sells companies for profit. His success makes him the target of gossip and innuendo.
This story centres on the sale to McCall of Suffolk Moulding, a plastic moulding company which is owned by Grant Austen and his daughter Lory Austen. After the sale is concluded, Grant Austen accuses McCall of deceiving him, although he did not disclose the potential loss of one of his biggest customers, Andiscott.
The story develops a romance between McCall and Lory Austen and concludes with Grant Austen realising that Cash McCall is a true gentleman rather than a sharp dealing vulture.
Characters
Cash McCall, the central character of the story, is a man who buys and sells companies.
The dust jacket describes him as “a vastly intriguing man, a twentieth century adventurer who carries on his fabulously successful buying and selling of companies behind a suspiciously secret screen of anonymity.”
Whilst he is scorned by others as unethical and unscrupulous, the book shows that he is in fact the character in the story who shows the highest integrity – someone who Ayn Rand would classify as a trader and who creates deals that benefit all parties and who is motivated by his interest in what he does.
Cash McCall is intensely private and shrouds his dealings with secrecy. As he states:
“I have never felt,” Cash had said, “that a man’s soul is any cleaner because he launders it in the public square.”
His privacy is also reflected in his country retreat – an idyllic valley surrounded by high mountains with a small house overlooking a waterfall. When he lives in the city, he lives in a penthouse suite on top of a hotel, and has a direct number not routed through the hotel switchboard. He flies around the country in his own converted B-26 (an ex-military bomber).
McCall he feels no shame for his success in business in its purest form, in fact his life celebrates success. When he first meets Gil Clark, who ends up working for him he explains:
“We have a peculiar national attitude towards money-making,” McCall went on. “We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call free enterprise – the profit system. We’re so serious about it that we’ll fight to preserve it – literally go to war – but when one of our citizens shows enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do our best to make him feel that he ought to be ashamed of himself.”
Gil Clark values free enterprise and integrity, but is initially skeptical of McCall, having seen many asset strippers in operation in his role as management consultant. Once he sees McCall in action, he is convinced of his credentials and works for him, earning significantly more than in his previous role.
Gil recognises the value of business, and has actively pursued a business career. Gil Clark represents the man who has potential to move to the next level with minor changes in his life.
Grant Austen is an entrepreneur who is selling his plastic company after operating it for a number of years and getting into a rut. He is unable to delegate, or take the company to the next level. He stifles his wife and daughter as his involvement in his business over a number of years has become pathological. The sale of the company to Cash McCall has the potential of freeing him and restoring relationships with his family to their proper roles.
A small man at heart, he obtains his self worth from his title and membership of industry bodies, and loses personal direction once the sale is concluded. At one point, he even considers working for the government. Austen does achieve a measure of freedom from the sale, and earns $2 million for his company, but his self worth continues to be linked to his membership of a committee that helps Latin American companies. At the conclusion of the book he is free of the company and is a wealthy man, but never achieves independence from others.
Lory Austen, Grant Austen’s daughter, becomes romantically involved with Cash McCall. Their first contact is prior to the events of the story. She is an artist, and yearns to break free from her parents. The sale of her share of the company provides her with financial freedom, but she still feels constrained – this is overcome in the course of the story:
The consciousness of freedom was self-strengthening and she was, almost for the first time in her life, vibrantly aware of the wonder of the free spirit.
Lory achieves her goal of freedom from her parents, and travels to Italy to study art.
Will Atherson is Cash McCall’s banker. Whilst he has inherited wealth, a mansion in the country and social position, he has consistently taken his own path in life. For example, his bank building was designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright and was ahead of its time. He has chosen his wife himself, rather than on the basis of what others think. Will Atherson is a man who is at peace with himself and happy with his life.
Maude Kennard is the deputy manager of the hotel where Cash McCall resides. Whilst efficient and enterprising, she relishes power and pursues arrangements where she wins at the price of the other party. For example, she obtains a designer dress by taking advantage of the seller. Maude pursues Cash McCall in order to consolidate her position, then tries to covertly damage him by working through Grant Austen.
Themes
Cash McCall has a number of strong free enterprise and privacy themes:
The importance of privacy
As discussed, Cash McCall is intensely private, even secret. Not only does he protect his own privacy, he also protects that of others by controlling Lockwood, a provider of personal background checks:
Lockwood is a bit annoyed at times, I fear. He regards Mr. McCall as being a bit too straight-laced for this day and age – he’ll have nothing to do with wire-tapping or any of that sort of thing. In fact – I imagine you know this – that the reason that he bought the agency – to control it and make sure that nothing off base was done.
At the same time, McCall recognises the value of information that is not publicly available, and uses Lockwood to do background checks to give him the edge in negotiations. But he draws a line between ethical intelligence gathering and unethical invasion of privacy.
Whilst written in the mid 1950s, the book discusses the erosion of privacy:
“What’s the legal situation on that type of thing?” Gil asked.
“Oh, rather vague,” Conway said. “And I’d say getting progressively more so. Actually, what law there is has been largely undermined by a shift in general attitude. There was a time, of course, when the invasion of a man’s privacy by eavesdropping was considered rather serious. Today, we’ve largely come around to the counter-view that there must be something wrong with any man who objects to having his privacy invaded – the point I was making in our talk at breakfast.”
The value of business
Cash McCall is a book that is positive about business.
Cash McCall does not agree with the position that business is only of value if funds a range of charities:
…it still strikes me as something of an anomaly that here, living under the profit system – fighting and dying to defend it – we’ve come now to regard the accumulation of profit as a crime against society. It’s gotten to the point now where the only way a millionaire can expiate his sin is to endow a charity of a cancer research foundation.
Gil Clark choses business as his career as it represents the way that the needs of society are met and represents a career of the highest order:
In the same way that the boys in the College of Medicine had somehow become dedicated to the ideal of ministering to the ills of man, Gil Clark had been captivated by the prospect of “improving the human lot through the making of better and better products to aid in the fulfillment of richer lives.” He had once written those words in a term paper that, unexpectedly, he had been called upon to read aloud. Spoken, it sounded like a pompous commercial on an institutional radio program, but the words expressed what he meant so he hadn’t been too bothered by the tongue-in-cheek grins of some of his classmates.
and
Industrial organisations were – again as he had written in his paper – the “key structures of an industrial civilisation, and it follows as a necessary corollary that the men who manage them are citizens of a high order.”
The nature of money and creation of wealth
Cash McCall lives the lifestyle befitting a multi-millionaire but is controversial because he creates large amounts of wealth by making small changes to companies that he acquires, and then finding a way that they achieve synergy with the operations of other companies. For McCall, 1 + 1 = 5. For McCall, creation of wealth is easy:
“That’s exactly what makes it so easy – there’s so little competition. Most people have been raised to believe in the old copybook maxims about hard work and frugality. They’ve had it dinned into them since childhood that money’s something to be grubbed out, a penny at a time.”
Thinking independently vs following the crowd
Cash McCall is the hero of this story because he is a maverick – he flies his own aeroplane and puts together deals that other people can’t see. That is the reason for his financial success. He is a true gentleman, poised and confident in any social situation.
His character contrasts with that of Grant Austen. Whilst an entrepreneur, Austen only makes one independent decision – to sell his own company. He defines his own value through the eyes of others and aspires to social prominence. He lacks confidence and is awkward. Austen tries to “network” at business lunches, understanding little about establishing his own value in the marketplace.
Rewarding excellence instead of mediocrity
Cash McCall selects Gil Clark as a competent employee. He also selects Conway, a highly competent and experienced lawyer.
However Austen is prepared to tolerate incompetent employees, such as his secretary who can’t write letters or leave legible notes, and his father-in-law who cost the company an important customer. This loyalty to the incompetent is not reciprocated – the secretary ignores him as soon as he sells the company and two staff from an industry body that he appointed “forget” to give him a name badge or organise his conference hotel room.
The book contrasts the blandness that Grant Austen accepts – a tired hotel resort which he thinks is wonderful – against the richness of McCall’s life and that of Will Atherson.
Government as the enemy of freedom and free enterprise
In Cash McCall, the interests and role of government are in direct opposition to those of free enterprise. For example, the income tax of 90% makes it difficult to accumulate wealth. The point is made that government legislation is seen as what is moral rather than what is legal. In the beginning of the story, McCall is audited by the IRS, but they find no basis for pursuing him.
Cash McCall effortlessly adapts to the government’s rules, and thrives no matter the circumstances. This requires a team of lawyers and accountants to support his efforts.
Conclusion
I enjoyed reading this book, and hope to also see the movie – it is available for online viewing from Amazon for those in the US.
This book has a very interesting perspective on some freedom themes. However, this story does not deal with personal transformation. Essentially the characters are the same at the end but they attain the logical results of their perspectives in life.
Lory achieves the freedom that she desires, and marries Cash McCall. Cash McCall finally has the relationship he has always been missing. Grant Austen sells his business and is appointed to a committee which provides advice to business in Latin America. Maude Kennard’s life is unchanged. Gil Clark has a new career which is the essence of his business goals.
My only criticism is that some of the female characters are quite passive. Miriam Austen, Grant Austen’s long suffering wife and Lory his daughter are dependent on the sale of the company to achieve their freedom, although they do follow their own paths after that. I expect that this reflects the perception of female roles in the mid 1950s.
Despite being written in the 1950s, I didn’t find the book dated (apart from the point noted above), although it may be a bit wordy in parts for some readers. It is a novel first and a work of philosophy second, and this makes is quite readable.
Tags: book review, cash mccall
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