Pop-culture writer Jesse McLean apparently intends to be as versatile as possible in his guide Kings of Madison Avenue, the Unofficial Guide to Mad Men. Not only does the book explain how the writers of the popular television show take cues from a diverse group that includes Sigmund Freud, Maya Angelou, Helen Gurley Brown, and others—and not only does he include capsulized histories of the Kennedy Administration, the second-wave feminist movement, and the Redskins’ presidential prediction record—but Kings also includes at the end a section on “how to party like a mad man.”
This “unofficial guide” (which implies there must be an “official” one) may indeed send readers scrambling for the official guide, if such exists. If so, here’s hoping it is better written, better edited, and more focused than its unofficial counterpart.
Kings of Madison Avenue is certainly not meant be a sober (no pun intended) or scholarly guide to the award-winning AMC series about misogynistic life among admen of the 1960s—an extremely entertaining and unique hodgepodge of cultural history, politics, drama, and comedy. But the book tries so hard to be everything to everyone that it probably won’t be too much fun to read for even the most enthusiastic Mad Men fan, nor would it be very worthwhile as a text or guide for popular culture classes. The quotes and allusions to poets, philosophers, and respected writers are interesting, but they do seem strained at times, even if one does acknowledge the talent and intelligence of the show’s writers.
Kings of Madison Avenue is so “inside” that it would be of little interest to anyone who hasn’t seen the show; at the same time, much of the material has been recycled so many times that it would be old hat for serious fans of the show (i.e., the actor who plays the senior ad executive, Robert Morse, appeared decades ago in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” which in itself was about ad agencies, wink wink. Or, the fact that there weren’t many women ad execs in the 1960s, and most women in the office were secretaries seeking husbands, etc.).
McLean, a Toronto TV and film critic who also has written for the online “journal of literary satire” YankeePotRoast.org (“Hastilly Written & Slopilly Edited”), has a writing style—or lack thereof—that doesn’t help matters. His sentences sometimes take circuitous paths before getting to the point, and occasionally two clauses in the same sentence have little relation to each other. For instance, in a bio of actor Vincent Kartheiser (account man Pete Campbell), he writes, “While Vincent Kartheiser may enjoy the high quality of the scripts and the peers he encounters each day on the set, the journeyman actor can’t help but find the pragmatic silver lining in his role.”
Or, when explaining why he wrote the book, McLean notes, “The investigation of shifting societal mores are (cq) more than just a framing device; they actually inform every episode in a way that current events inhabit our own daily lives.”
Still, Kings does have its moments. The brief biographies of the cast offer some intriguing tidbits about the actors—for instance, Jon Hamm’s early childhood is reminiscent in some ways of Don Draper’s, the character he plays. And McLean does present a few fresh insights into the cultural precursors to Mad Men. For instance, the vastly entertaining Doris Day-Rock Hudson Lover Come Back (1961), in retrospect, does have Mad Men elements to it, and the author’s brief discussion of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road is appropriate and interesting. But an index, in addition to the bibliography provided, would have aided in a search of these references.
McLean seems to have designed the book as part light pop-culture history and part scholarly study; he probably would have had more success if he had concentrated on the former and forgotten about the latter. Fewer but more fully developed examples, anecdotes, and analogies might have helped his goal of shedding light on the phenomenon of Mad Men.
MARILYN GREENWALD
Ohio University