Birth of A Salesman is an inverse view of Willy Loman’s story. It is a humorous and sarcastic tale of how, in 1977, a clueless underachiever college graduate, Dan DiGiglio, drifts around and tries to get a start on his career and adult life. It is a coming-of-age story set in a world that many people don’t know about and the haphazard way life paths are chosen consciously or unconsciously.
We start the adventure with Dan as he tries to get his start in the real world of professional sales in a very depressed 1977 economy. His first stop is selling Chevrolets in a Boston suburb and all the characters and personality that was Lavoie Chevrolet. Dan gets a crash course in sales and humanity, especially from his car sales colleagues. It’s a close look at male speech and bravado as they convince themselves of their power and prowess in the sales arena. As the story unfolds, we get glimpses into Dan’s memories and inner thoughts. Dan lives in his head and we get to hear how he sizes up life’s curve balls hurled at him.
Dan continues to learn and improve his situation and lands himself a professional engineering sales job selling widgets in the mid-Atlantic region of the country. Again the circumstances of the travel and the characters he works for and calls on continue Dan’s experience and competence.
Interspersed throughout are flashbacks of Dan’s life and how these experiences are a major part of Dan’s development as a more highly functioning adult. He starts to “figure” things out, mostly the hard way. Some of his background stories are his being bullied as a tween and its impact along with scenes of his student life at UMASS – Amherst and other current events of the time into the story, i.e., the fall of Saigon, the murder of JFK, Jack Ruby, John Lennon and Dan’s point of view and reactions on these events.
