Exploring Cultural References in "Mad Men"

Mad Men: Pete Campbell, Don Draper, and Roger Sterling. Photo: MCC Current [CC BY-SA 2.0] via Flickr.

The Ultimate Guide to Mad Men: The Guardian Companion to the Slickest Show on Television by Will Dean

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Recent period-drama television series closely resemble soap operas but with a twist: there is much to learn from deliberate literary, cultural, and historical references. 

I first became aware of Mad Men while reading a post on The Art of Manliness about Don Draper's haircut. Much has been written about the series on respected media websites, including the Wall Street Journal, The Conversation, and The Guardian. (Another of my favourite period-dramas, Downton Abbey, has a similar following in terms of literary, cultural and historical references.) 

I purchased this book to delve deeper into some of the cultural references appearing in the series. I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the more obvious references, such as Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency, Palisades Amusement Park, the story of Park Avenue Armory, Penn Station, and other historical sites. The New York Public Library has also compiled a Mad Men reading list and a series of 1960's fashion illustrations. 

What I didn't know was that most of this book is available on The Guardian's website. The book itself is formulaic, and only covers the first three seasons. Aside from some interesting essays on the various sociological aspects of the show, the general format is a description of each episode, commentary on the social and cultural references, and comments by a number of the participants on the original blog. 

It wasn't riveting stuff, and at times I felt that almost anyone with the right institutional backing could produce such an easy (lazy?) book. Having said that, I discovered much that I had missed on my several viewings of the series. 

Like Downton Abbey, so much of the background research that went into writing the drama is far from self-evident, and there is much to be gained from lifting the lid on the research. Even the anachronisms and historical errors (usually stemming from poetic licence) are sources of fascinating knowledge. 

Matthew Weiner's work is first-class, and I must admit to a tinge of envy that someone could know so much and write for the screen. Of course, this is no ordinary person, but it was interesting that one of the blog commentators noticed in the credits that a mental health expert had been employed in the making of one episode. I took some solace in the fact that such big productions are the work of many people. (Until I discovered that Matthew Weiner has written a novella, too. Now I will have to read it - and that's how my reading process works!) 

I have often struggled with the idea of not finishing books that I do not like, but then I often end up discovering something interesting in even the worst of books. Not that this book is so bad, but when the formula for the final episode of the book ends, so does the book. It is followed by a list of the music featured in each episode. (Check out Spotify's Mad Men playlist - the soundtrack is great!) 

I often get a bit snobbish about the value of a television series in comparison to literature. But the same could be said of my favourite computer game, Sid Meier's Civilization, which has been referred to as a form of "edutainment". 

In many ways, I find television series, particularly period-dramas, a useful form of Netflix bingeing with a mild excuse of having some educational value. For example, after finishing both Mad Men and Downton Abbey, I looked for the "best" television series to start on next. Consistently, Breaking Bad rated as the best television series of all time. But after a few episodes, I found the show rather empty and I abandoned it soon after. 

Recently, Grimm had me hooked, and it has sent me off to learn all about the Black Forest and the Grimm brothers. I daresay learning from Breaking Bad would not lead to the type of education I am seeking! But I digress. 

I learnt much from this book, but it is obviously dated, and I am in no rush to read up more about Mad Men any time soon. But I will continue to delve into the many literary, cultural, and historical references from the series (and this book), but I really must be a little more critical with my reading choices and not rely on a brand name (no pun intended) when going off the beaten track.

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Literary Japan: Kōji's Introduction to Japanese Classics

"Great Wave Off Kanagawa" (circa 1826) by Katsushika Hokusai [Public domain] via Wikimedia.

Words to Live by: Japanese Classics for Our Times by NAKANO Koji

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At the International Political Science Association's World Congress 2018 in Brisbane this July, I stumbled upon the market stand for Japan Library, a Japanese publisher focused on translating great Japanese books into English. 

Not knowing what to expect, I bought two hardcover books priced at $25 each. I have read a few translations of various novels and I am rarely disappointed, but this book seems more along the lines of Harold Bloom's and Italo Calvino's works on classic literature, with a focus on Japanese poetry written by Buddhists monks in medieval and pre-industrial Japan. 

The physical book is beautifully presented with a hardcover, dust jacket, ribbon book marker, and paper that is of obvious high quality. The readability of the translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter is superb, and although there may be some things lost in translation, to an amateur like me, you couldn't pick it. 

What I enjoyed most about the work is that Kōji is humble yet powerful in awakening me to classic Japanese literature. Recently, I have had a similar experience with classic Japanese art and music, and I now enjoy the art of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and listening to the koto music of Yatsuhashi Kengyo (1614–1685). 

I discovered these two from Sid Meier's Civilization VI, of all places. But that is not unusual - I discovered my most favourite composer, John Adams, as part of the soundtrack of Civilization III. (It is the only computer game I ever play. If anyone is willing to let me work on the cultural/historical aspects of future releases of the Civilization game series, do let me know! I first played Civilization in 1994 and have occasionally played it ever since. I have learnt more about art, music, architecture, science, warfare, and history from that game than almost any other source. If only I could incorporate the game into my teaching, I could find an excuse to play it more often.) 

I hoped this work would give me a similar experience; and it did. 

The text flows in straight-forward prose, outlining the work of six Japanese literary greats, interrupted by poetry from each of the authors, with commentary by Kōji that never "got on my goat". If anything, Kōji's explanations and personal observations enrich what is already a very rich literary experience. (Kōji was 77 years old at the time this was published. An interesting aside - I know someone who gives their age as the year they are living, rather than the most recently past year. Apparently, it was Japanese custom to give the age of a child as 1 year old in their first year, so I have been forced to accept that this person, who went to primary school in Japan, is not incorrect!) 

There is so much conveyed in this work, it is difficult to give a summary without writing a series of maxims that would rival La Rochefoucauld's. Suffice it to say, my favourite poet from the collection is Saigyō. 

At first, I was not impressed by how the moon and cherry blossoms sent his heart off into the ether, only to return of its own will some time later. I thought this all a bit over the top, but then (p. 173):

Master Mongaku despised Saigyō... If he ever ran into him, he often said, he'd break his skull.

One day, Saigyō turned up at Master Mongaku's temple. His disciples worried what he would do to Saigyō, but the meeting went cordially. Afterwards, Mongaku's disciples asked why their master had gone back on his word:

"You idiots!"Mongaku scolded. "Was that the face of someone I could possibly beat up? It was the face of someone who could beat me to a pulp!"

I, too, was surprised that this ex-warrior, samurai turned Buddhist monk, could be such a poet. It just seemed to be the work that belonged to a sickly, weak yet beautiful man who couldn't hurt a fly. This is what makes Saigyō's literature more remarkable, and Kōji presents the work and the backstory in such a way that the book resonates long after the reading is over. 

I also learnt much about traditional Japanese poetry. The haiku is familiar to most people, but I knew nothing of the other traditional forms, many of which appear in this work, including the various haikai and waka forms. If I were to take a crash course in Japanese literature and Zen Buddhism, this book would be the place to start. Of particular interest is Tsurezuregusa or Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenkō. The ideas about happiness, solitude, life and death, and, most importantly, the Buddhist concept of the "here-now" were enlightening. 

What I like most is that Nakano Kōji learnt about his own culture late in life, after focusing on Western literature (particularly Kafka), and has an ability to make comparisons of Japanese thought and philosophy with the ideas I am more familiar with. This made it easy to appreciate the wisdom of the various Buddhist monks without needing a solid grounding in Buddhism to make sense of it. Indeed, the works are far from religious, but are certainly "spiritual" in a universal sense. 

I daresay I will be returning to Japan Library to discover more classic Japanese literature, and I am inspired to try a Japanese novel (translated into English, of course) soon. My next Japan Library work is Self-Respect and Independence of Mind: The Challenge of Fukuzawa Yukichi, a biographical work on the Meiji Restoration-era intellectual.

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If on a post-modern novel Italo Calvino

If on a winter's night a traveller marathon. Photo: @kellywritershouse [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This would have to be one of the most unusually good books I have read. It is not quite a novel and not quite a collection of short stories, organised in an unusual way. It is partly written in the second person (Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City was my first second-person novel) and on several occasions, the author speaks directly to the reader (a literary technique known as "authorial intrusion"). 

The main story is structured using numbered chapters, interspersed with the beginnings of several books (with the relevant book names as chapter headings) that relate directly to the main story. It is rather complex in terms of its structure and I couldn't help thinking it is very much a "post-modern" novel. But it works. 

I am often surprised by the number of books that are about books and authors, a bit like 42nd Street - a musical within a musical. But this book is very clever. While at times I couldn't help thinking that Calvino had turned a number of "false starts" into a publication, it is too good to have been written so perfunctorily. 

Two stand-out parts work for me. First, Calvino addresses two types of writers (pp. 173-4):

One of the two is a productive writer, the other a tormented writer. The tormented writer watches the productive writer filling pages with uniform lines, the manuscript growing in a pile of neat pages. In a little while the book will be finished: certainly a best seller - the tormented writer thinks with a certain contempt but also with envy. He considers the productive writer no more than a clever craftsman, capable of turning out machine-made novels catering to the taste of the public; but he cannot repress a strong feeling of envy for that man who expresses himself with such methodological confidence... [The productive writer] feels [the tormented writer] is struggling with something obscure, a tangle, a road to be dug leading no one knows where... and he is overcome with admiration. Not only admiration, but also envy; because he feels how limited his work is, how superficial compared with what the tormented writer is seeking.

I certainly feel like each of these authors depending on the type of writing I am engaged in. That self-consciousness is part of the process is something that Calvino weaves into the plot perfectly. Second, Calvino picks up on how I read (p. 254):

Reading is a discontinuous and fragmentary operation.

What I find most interesting about this reflection is that Calvino's work, or at least the several of his works I have read so far, all seem to play to the discontinuous and fragmentary reader. The structure of this work, much like Invisible Cities and Mr Palomar, suits a style of reader who is unable to read in large chunks of time. 

While not being able to read long and uninterrupted is far from ideal, Calvino's work is presented in convenient and memorable chunks that suit the fragmentary and disrupted peace of the post-modern worker. 

There is still a little more of Calvino's work for me to read, but I have now covered his most famous works. And I am delighted to have "discovered" Marcovaldo in a Shanghai bookstore which introduced me to one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century only a few years ago.

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