'Mad Men'-Inspired Reading List

It’s summer. That means Mad Men SHOULD be airing new episodes right now. But, thanks to difficult and drawn out contract negotiations, the beginning of the show’s fifth season has been pushed back to next year. (They only just started shooting recently.)


But to keep us thinking about the deliciously nuanced and layered period drama, the show’s blog has released a Mad Men reading list:
“Betty reading The Group in the bathtub. Don Draper with a copy of Exodus in bed. Henry Francis with a whole stack of books near the fireplace. Literature always gets its due in Mad Men. But how many of the books cited in the series have you actually read?”

Here’s their recommended, show-related summer reading list by season:

Season 1: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe; Exodus* by Leon Uris and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence.

Season 2: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone; Meditations in an Emergency* by Frank O’Hara; Moby Dick* by Herman Melville; Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. (If you want to see that amazingly poignant scene where Don Draper reads a section of a poem from Meditations in an Emergency, go here. They've disabled the video from being embedded.)

Season 3: Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy; The Group by Mary McCarthy and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

Season 4: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict; The Clue of the Black Keys by Carolyn Keene and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre.

Which ones have you read? Which ones do you want to read? (The handful I've read are marked with an asterisk.*)

Image credit: AMC via The Poetry Habit.

Take 2: AMC Re-Airing 'Mad Men's' Second Season

Did your DVR breakdown some time last summer or fall? Did you miss any installments of Mad Men's second, award-winning season? Well now you get a second chance.

AMC has begun re-airing episodes on Sundays at midnight, after Breaking Bad. They started last night with the season two premiere. After I watched it, I was again reminded that I have yet to pick up Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency, which comes up again, later in season two when we learn to whom Don Draper mailed the book.

Is there any one episode to which you're really looking forward to seeing again? I want to again observe Betty Draper slowly unravel and make Don pay for his indiscretions -- starting with episode 8, "A Night to Remember" -- knowing what I know now about what happens in season two's finale.

Image credit: AMC.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Mountain King

This was another one of those Mad Men episodes which contained a jarring scene that -- like most problematic situations on the show (except for Freddy Rumsen's mishap that directly led to his termination) -- is not likely to be dealt with directly or openly. At least not right away. But more on THE scene of the episode in a bit. We must first dish on The Dish of Mad Men: Don Draper/Dick Whitman.

So many unanswered questions were addressed in this episode with regards to Don. The woman who we saw in the flashback a few weeks ago -- when Don was but an awkward-looking used car salesman -- was Anna Draper, the wife of the man whose identity Don stole. It was to Anna that Don sent the collection of Frank O'Hara poems, Meditations in an Emergency . . . which, by the way, is the title of the season finale next week. In a flashback we saw that after Anna initially confronted Don about his pretending to be her husband, he told her the truth, a novelty for the character we've come to know throughout these two seasons.

Anna and Don seem to have the most honest relationship of all the characters on Mad Men. In Anna's presence, Don was at ease, boyishly giddy at times and true. We saw scenes of Don at Anna's California house celebrating Christmas, fixing furniture for her and telling her that he'd "met a girl" (Betty) who was "from a good family. She's educated . . . I just like the way she laughs, the way she looks at me." (He had to ask Anna Draper to grant him a divorce so he could marry Betty.) Don thanked her for allowing him to create a new life for himself and for not divulging his secret; Anna thanked Don for paying for her oceanside home, his refuge of sorts too, where you can smell the salt air from the porch.

When the episode opened, we saw that Don had abandoned the spoiled socialite he met during his business trip, and retreated to Anna's. He slept while she made him food, bought him clothes. He talked and opened up about what's become of him, saying: "I ruined everything . . . I've told you things I've never told Betty. Why does it have to be that way?"

Poignantly, he also observed: "I've been watching my life. It's right there. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can't."

Later, as Anna was giving a reluctant Don a tarot card reading, she wisely remarked, "The only thing keeping you unhappy is the belief that you are alone." The final scene of the episode showed Don walking into the ocean, as if being cleansed -- baptized -- while a song about "a new life" played in the background.

Back at the Draper home in New York, Betty had to get on with the business of life, paying the bills, signing Don's signature to checks, taking care of the kids and disciplining her daughter (pulling her by the ponytail and shoving her in a closet!) after Sally was caught smoking in the powder room. After Sally blamed Betty for driving Don away, Betty realized she had to come clean with Sally about her "disagreement" with Don and tell her that she didn't know when Don would be back. Her outburst at Sally notwithstanding, Betty seemed much more in control and independent than we've seen recently.

But at Sterling Cooper, things don't seem so under control. Bert Cooper, while uncomfortable with the precarious economic situation in which Roger Sterling's libido has placed the firm, agreed to merge with another, larger company which has promised to deliver an infusion of money. (It's not clear if Bert understands the condition of Duck Phillips being appointed Sterling Cooper's president.) Peggy Olson landed a big account -- adored her Popsicle pitch! -- as well as a new office next door to Don's office, where she used to be the secretary in what seems like a lifetime ago.

Then there was Joan Holloway. If Don is just watching his idyllic life and trying to find a way into it that feels authentic, Joan is seeking what she thinks she's supposed to want: A marriage to a handsome, affluent, respected physician, Greg Harris. But he's an oaf, a coward and, as of this latest episode, a rapist. Cowed by Joan's sexual experience, he refused to let her take the lead in bed, then, after picking up on a vibe between ex-paramours Joan and Roger at work, Greg ordered Joan to fix him a drink in Don's office where he forcibly raped her on the floor as she tried to fight him off.

In the first scene with Joan and Greg in bed when he seemed put off by her history, Joan said, "There is no 'before.'" Well following this violation of Joan's body and her trust, I hope that the "after" does not include Greg, no matter how badly Joan wants to be a "Mrs."

Will Don be "reborn" into an entirely different persona yet again, or will we see him try to reclaim the life he says that, up until now, he's just been observing from the outside? Predictions for the season finale? Will Joan dump Greg?

Image credit: AMC.

Enough Titles for a 'Mad Men' Book Club?

After watching the latest episode of Mad Men, I think it would be an interesting project to put together a list of titles of books that are referenced on the show, the way folks do with Lost.

Mad Men is so tightly crafted that certainly, if a book is featured (so that you can read the title), or characters mention it, it must have some sort of significance to the greater plot, right? Or maybe I'm reading too much into these things. Anyway . . .

During "The Jet Set" episode, the William Faulkner novel The Sound and The Fury received some prominent attention. Having not read it (yes, I'm hanging my head in shame), I looked it up online and came across this synopsis from C-SPAN as part of its American Writers series:

"Set in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, Miss., in the early 20th century, the novel describes the decay and fall of the aristocratic Compson family, and, implicitly, of an entire social order, from four different points of view."

Hmm. Sound like it could be applied to the decay and fall of the folks at Sterling Cooper? At Don Draper's life?

Earlier this season, Betty Draper was seen reading, Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. An excerpt from eNotes says of the book about an ocean voyage:

"Ship of Fools is notable for its pessimistic view of the human condition. In particular, the Germans are portrayed in a harshly negative light. They are mostly anti-Semitic and contemptuous of races other than their own, with an arrogant sense of their own superiority. Critics have remarked on how accurately Porter conveyed the German mentality on the eve of the rise of Nazism. However, the other characters, with few exceptions, are unsavory also. The one Jew on the ship is filled with hatred for all Gentiles; the Spanish, who are members of a dancing troupe, are presented as amoral thieves, pimps and prostitutes. There is little genuine human love present in the novel, although there is much comedy and satire."

In season two's premiere, Don read and then mailed a book of poems, Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara to someone. At the end of the episode, you hear Don's voice-over reading a part of the poem, "Mayakovsky" (from National Post):

"Now I am quietly waiting
for the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is gray and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just gray.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do
perhaps I am myself again."

In season one, Don was seen reading Leon Uris' Exodus (in the primo episode "Babylon") and The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. In July, New York Magazine ran a piece examining what books were pictured on Don Draper's bookshelf, including The Hidden Persuaders and Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, although I don't recall any scenes of any characters reading those books.

If you put all these titles together, you could form a reading log for a Mad Men book club. Not only could you analyze the books, you could analyze them for how they apply (or don't apply) to the themes and characters in Mad Men.

Any titles I missed? Please add them in the comments section below. If I get a comprehensive list, I may indeed start a Mad Men book club.