The Mad Men Reading List: 25 Revealing Books Read by the Characters on the Show

in Literature, Television | April 7th, 2015

mad men reading list

Image cour­tesy of The New York Pub­lic Library.

The good peo­ple over at the New York Pub­lic Library com­piled a list of books read by the char­ac­ters of Mad Men, which just start­ed the last half of its sev­enth and final sea­son. Over the course of the series, the show’s char­ac­ters drank sev­er­al swim­ming pools worth of cock­tails, engaged in a host of ill-advised illic­it affairs and, on occa­sion, dreamed up a bril­liant adver­tis­ing cam­paign or two. As it turns out, they also read quite a bit.

All the books seem to say some­thing about the inner life of each char­ac­ter. The show’s enig­mat­ic main char­ac­ter, Don Drap­er, favored works like Dante’s Infer­no and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury – books that point towards Draper’s series-long down­ward spi­ral. The whiny, inse­cure Pete Camp­bell read Thomas Pynchon’s para­noid clas­sic The Cry­ing of Lot 49. And Bert Coop­er, the aris­to­crat­ic bow-tie sport­ing patri­arch of Ster­ling Coop­er is appar­ent­ly an Ayn Rand fan; he’s seen read­ing Atlas Shrugged ear­ly in the series. You can see the full read­ing list below or here in a beau­ti­ful PDF designed by the NYPL.

A num­ber of the texts list­ed below also appear in our Free eBooks and Free Audio­Books col­lec­tions.

DON DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • EXODUS by Leon Uris (Episode 106 “Baby­lon”)
  • THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe
  • MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY by Frank O’Hara
  • THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkn­er
  • THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD by Ruth Bene­dict
  • THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John Le Carre
  • THE FIXER by Bernard Mala­mud
  • ODDS AGAINST by Dick Fran­cis
  • THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri
  • THE LAST PICTURE SHOW by Lar­ry McMurtry
  • PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth

ROGER STERLING’S PICK:

  • CONFESSIONS OF AN ADVERTISING MAN by David Ogilvy

JOAN HARRIS’S PICK:

  • LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER by D. H. Lawrence

PETE CAMPBELL’S PICKS:

  • THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pyn­chon
  • GOODNIGHT MOON by Mar­garet Wise Brown

BETTY DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • BABYLON REVISITED AND OTHER STORIES by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
  • THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy

LANE PRYCE’S PICK:

  • THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain

HENRY FRANCIS’S PICK:

  • THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

BERT COOPER’S PICK:

  • ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand

SALLY DRAPER’S PICKS:

  • THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gib­bon
  • TWENTY ONE BALLOONS by William Pene Du Bois
  • NANCY DREW: THE CLUE OF THE BLACK KEYS by Car­olyn Keene
  • THE BLACK CAULDRON by Lloyd Alexan­der
  • ROSEMARY’S BABY by Ira Levin

via The New York Pub­lic Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Ernest Hemingway’s List for a Young Writer

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Every Literary Reference Made by Sterling Archer in One Supercut

in Animation, Books, Television | April 6th, 2015

Ser­e­na Bram­ble, the mas­ter­mind behind this super­cut writes, “Ster­ling Archer, the mod­ern take-down of James Bond on Adam Reed’s cult ani­mat­ed show Archer, is many things,” includ­ing a book nerd, “but that last detail has always been a quirk in the show, with lit­er­ary ref­er­ences spout­ed out almost as often as jokes about oral sex.” If you’ve watched the show, you may have caught the ref­er­ences to Chekhov, Tolkien and Orwell, just to name a few. But, in case you did­n’t, Bram­ble’s super­cut gath­ers them togeth­er and shows proof that Archer’s cre­ator indeed had a “tenure as a frus­trat­ed Eng­lish major.” Check it out.

via Indiewire

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President Obama Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

in Politics, Television | March 31st, 2015

Back in 2012, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, already on record as being a fan of The Wire, was asked by ESPN to name his favorite char­ac­ter on the show, to which he replied “It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbe­liev­able, right?” Fast for­ward to 2015, and we find Mr. Oba­ma host­ing David Simon (the cre­ator of The Wire) at the White House, and hav­ing a frank con­ver­sa­tion about the TV show and the war on drugs, and what lessons we’ve learned along the way. Of course, the con­ver­sa­tion does­n’t end with­out Omar get­ting a men­tion … or with­out us get­ting to see Oba­ma as TV host. A sign of what’s to come after 2016?

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

in Television, Video Games | March 25th, 2015

blacklodge2600-ataricatalog

They made a video game out of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalk­er, so why not Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is, of course, a sem­i­nal cult TV series, a sur­re­al­ist soap opera spun out of the mind of David Lynch. When it came out in the late 80s, Amer­i­ca was seized with the show’s cen­tral mys­tery – who killed Lau­ra Palmer? A tor­tured blonde beau­ty queen who wound up dead, wrapped in plas­tic. Its first sea­son (US view­ers can watch it on Hulu) was eas­i­ly one of the best ever on tele­vi­sion with great char­ac­ters, inside jokes and just enough Lynchi­an weird­ness to unnerve a main­stream audi­ence with­out total­ly freak­ing them out. Too bad, then, that the qual­i­ty of the show’s sec­ond sea­son went off a cliff.

You would expect a video game about the series to be about the search for Lau­ra Palmer’s killer, but no. Instead, the game, an Atari 2600-style work called Black Lodge 2600, is a riff on the show’s final angry episode. In that episode, FBI agent Dale Coop­er delves into the oth­er­world­ly Black Lodge, which, in spite of its name, is dec­o­rat­ed pri­mar­i­ly in red cur­tains. There, Coop­er is con­front­ed by his dop­pel­ganger. Lynch’s Jun­gian obses­sions have nev­er been as bald as in that episode.

Basi­cal­ly, if you felt like your well-worn copy of Pit­fall was strange­ly lack­ing in busts of Venus De Milo and a per­vad­ing sense of the Unheim­liche, then this video game might be for you. The game’s man­u­al, which has way too many excla­ma­tion points, sets the stage:

A day in the FBI was nev­er like this before! You are Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er and you’ve found your­self trapped inside the Black Lodge, a sur­re­al and dan­ger­ous place between worlds. Try as you might, you can’t seem to find any­thing but the same room and hall­way no mat­ter which way you turn. Worse yet, your dop­pel­ganger is in hot pur­suit! You have no choice but to keep run­ning through the room and hall­way (or is it more than one?) and above all else, don’t let your dop­pel­ganger touch you!

[…]

You’ll find quick­ly that you’re not alone in the Black Lodge, though your friends are few and far between. Not only that, the Lodge itself seems to be active­ly try­ing to trip you up at all times! You’ll be dodg­ing chairs and crazed Lodge res­i­dents all while try­ing to keep your own san­i­ty. How long can this go on?

Based on this descrip­tion, I can’t tell if this game is com­pelling or if it will mere­ly evoke the same feel­ing of exis­ten­tial futil­i­ty I feel every time I call Time Warn­er Cable. Watch a video of the game below and judge for your­self. Or start down­load­ing the game and the man­u­al here.

Note: If you have prob­lems get­ting the game going on a Mac, then fol­low these Black Lodge trou­bleshoot­ing instruc­tions: Go to “Sys­tem Pref­er­ences”, open “Secu­ri­ty & Pri­va­cy”, click the pad­lock to allow changes, then click the “Any­where” option under “Allow appli­ca­tions down­loaded from.”

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Dum­b­land, David Lynch’s Twist­ed Ani­mat­ed Series (NSFW)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Polish, Irish, Australian, Yiddish & More

in Comedy, Film, Television, Theatre | March 18th, 2015

Meryl Streep, fre­quent­ly hailed as one of our Great­est Liv­ing Actress­es — she claims there’s no such thing — com­mands a near-ency­clo­pe­dic mas­tery of accents.

Oth­ers may pre­pare for their roles by work­ing with a dialect coach or lis­ten­ing to tapes of native speak­ers, but Streep push­es to the lim­it, as indi­cat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion with author Andre Dubus III, below.

She not only learned Pol­ish in order to play a trou­bled Holo­caust sur­vivor in Sophie’s Choice, she thought deeply about the way gen­der roles and peri­od inform vocal pre­sen­ta­tion.

Clear­ly a lot of effort goes into the per­for­mances that leave British crit­ics cheer­ing Streep as she sails above play­ing fields lit­tered with Amer­i­can actors who dared attempt Eng­lish accents.

Her com­mit­ment to her craft is inad­ver­tent­ly to blame for pop­u­lar­iz­ing the phrase “dingo’s got my baby.”

How refresh­ing that this ver­sa­tile and accom­plished actor is not pre­cious about her skills. She game­ly trot­ted them out for the come­di­an Ellen DeGeneres’ par­lor game, above. Looks like fun, pro­vid­ed one’s not an intro­vert. Each play­er draws a card labelled with an accent, sticks it to the brim of a sil­ly hat, then tried to guess the accent, based on her partner’s impromp­tu per­for­mance.

“Brook­lyn?” Streep gig­gles when the Louisiana-born DeGeneres has a go at Boston.

Her stab at the Bronx shows off her improv chops far bet­ter than the most recent stunt DeGeneres roped her into.

(For what it’s worth, Ben Affleck also excelled at this game. The late Robin Williams was less con­vinc­ing, but char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly irre­press­ible, even when called upon to imper­son­ate speak­ers of oth­er races.)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and low bud­get the­ater impre­sario. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How to Draw Don Draper: A Short Video Primer from Mad Men Insider Josh Weltman

in Comics/Cartoons, Television | March 12th, 2015

Josh Welt­man, a 25 year vet­er­an of the adver­tis­ing busi­ness, has been a part of Mad Men since the show’s first sea­son. He has worked close­ly, he tells us on his web site, “with Matthew Wein­er and the show’s writ­ers and pro­duc­ers to help ensure that Mad Men accu­rate­ly depicts the process of cre­at­ing ads and ser­vic­ing clients, and that the show’s adver­tis­ing and busi­ness sto­ries play true to life, true to char­ac­ter and true to peri­od. He also cre­ates most of the orig­i­nal ads seen on the show.”

On his Vimeo channel, you can find just one video. But it’s an essen­tial one — a short quick primer on how to draw Don Drap­er. Start prac­tic­ing. The final sea­son of Mad Men kicks off on Sun­day, April 5, at 10 p.m. on AMC.

via Devour

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Leonard Nimoy Recites Famous Soliloquy from Hamlet in Yiddish: “To Be or Not To Be”

in Life, Sci Fi, Television | February 28th, 2015

Leonard Nimoy’s death yeste­day at the age of 83 is an enor­mous loss to fans across the world who loved and respect­ed the actor. Nimoy may have nev­er tran­scend­ed his Star Trek char­ac­ter Spock, though he tried, but he seemed to have made his peace with that, sign­ing his many wise tweets in the last few months of his life with the acronym “LLAP,” or “live long and pros­per,” the Vul­can farewell. The actor and his most famous char­ac­ter were very famil­iar to even non-fans of the show; Spock has come to rep­re­sent an arche­type of the dis­pas­sion­ate and ratio­nal, and Nimoy even­tu­al­ly immersed him­self in the Star Trek uni­verse, pen­ning Star Trek nov­els and con­tin­u­ing to star in the franchise’s many films (and in good natured car ads with his replace­ment). He was an ambas­sador for sci­ence fic­tion, and an ambas­sador for sci­ence fact, as a major donor to NASA and nar­ra­tor of sev­er­al films about astron­o­my.

Nimoy also had sev­er­al oth­er non- Trek endeav­ors of note, includ­ing his work as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and nar­ra­tor of audio­books about, for exam­ple, whales. And while Spock fans watched the actor inhab­it the half-Vul­can, half-human character’s exis­ten­tial strug­gles with his iden­ti­ty, Nimoy the actor had his own dis­tinc­tive back­ground as the son of Ukrain­ian Jew­ish immi­grants. His par­ents escaped the town of Zaslav in what was then Sovi­et Rus­sia and emi­grat­ed to Boston’s West End, a neigh­bor­hood rough­ly 60 per­cent Ital­ian and 25–30 per­cent Jew­ish. It was a place—Nimoy says in the engag­ing 10 minute excerpt above from an inter­view with Christa Whitney—where the Ital­ians spoke Yid­dish and the Jews spoke Ital­ian (Nimoy speaks some Yid­dish, some famous lines from Ham­let!, above).

Nimoy remem­bers his per­son­al his­to­ry, his par­ents’ bemuse­ment with Spock, and his own iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the famous char­ac­ter: “Spock is an alien wher­ev­er he is,” says Nimoy, “not total­ly at home in the Vul­can cul­ture… not total­ly at home in the human cul­ture. And that alien­ation is some­thing that I had learned in Boston… so I under­stood that aspect of the char­ac­ter.” The inter­view was taped in Octo­ber of 2013 as part of the Yid­dish Book Center’s Wexler Oral His­to­ry Project. As we grieve the loss of Nimoy-as-Spock, it’s a fit­ting way to get to know much more about the man him­self. Hear much more of Nimoy’s Yid­dish and much more about his life in the full, two-hour inter­view below. You can find basic Yid­dish lessons in our col­lec­tion, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

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Rare Interview: Tim Curry Discusses The Rocky Horror Picture Show, During the Week of Its Release (1975)

in Film, Television | February 9th, 2015

A defin­ing role can be both bless­ing and curse. In August of 1975, the week the The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show opened, its 29-year-old star, Tim Cur­ry gave an inter­view to STOIC, the Stu­dent Tele­vi­sion Of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege.

In between clips of Curry’s Frank-n-Furter sashay­ing through such des­tined-to-become cult favorites as “Sweet Trans­ves­tite” and “The Time Warp,” in fish­nets, mer­ry wid­ow, and maquil­lage designed by David Bowie’s per­son­al make­up artist, the actor enter­tained questions…in lus­cious black and white!

Kudos to the young inter­view­er, Mark Cald­well, for nev­er inter­rupt­ing or try­ing to elbow his way into the spot­light with jokey asides or dou­ble enten­dres. The reward is a seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the film­mak­ing process and the actor’s craft.

(Bear in mind that it would be at least a year until mid­night audi­ences at New York’s Waver­ly The­ater start­ed throw­ing toast, rice, and toi­let paper at the screen, thus ini­ti­at­ing an entire script’s worth of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.)

Hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed the role on the Lon­don stage (he audi­tioned with Lit­tle Richard’s “Tut­ti Frut­ti”) and reprised it in L.A., Cur­ry was clear­ly ready to put some space between him­self and his icon­ic cre­ation, announcing—correctly, as it turns out—that any sequels would have to pro­ceed with­out him.

Then he clammed up for three decades, refus­ing to dis­cuss his most icon­ic role until 2005, when he broke the silence dur­ing an inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air .

It’s clear that Cur­ry saw the mak­ing of the film as a seri­ous busi­ness, but Rocky Hor­ror fans will find plen­ty of juicy morsels to feed their obses­sion. Even vir­gins will enjoy the sto­ry of Frank’s evolv­ing accent —from mid­dle Euro­pean to “Bel­gravia Host­ess with the Mostest.”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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