The rapid acceptance in America of Stanislavsky's approach to actor training is often presented as an unexpected and unaccountable imposition of foreign culture. But Keith Walden argues that, while the ‘method’ may have been an innovation in acting schools, its goals and techniques were already familiar in other spheres of American life – particularly in the voluminous advice literature directed at salespeople. The similarities are not surprising, since both attempts to shape performances were inspired by the erosion of older notions of coherent, stable selfhood. Though the cultural purposes of acting and selling remained sharply different, the transgressive potential of modern theatre was dependent on a widespread belief that the roles required in ordinary work should be competently enacted. Keith Walden is a member of the History Department at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. He is a former editor of the Canadian Historical Review and author of Becoming Modern in Toronto: the Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late-Victorian Culture.