Still, I got to thinking: what if Sterling Cooper & Partners were contacted by the people at Random House in 1969, and were asked to help market this book? Obviously it isn’t an airline company, Chevy, or some old American brand that needs a fresh new spin, but it’s amusing to imagine what Don would come up with if the partners assigned him the Portnoy’s Complaint account.
A deliciously funny book, absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious.-The New York Times. It’s difficult to find an allegory in Don opening up Portnoy’s, but a book about a descent into hell, that’s something we can understand. Thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality and at the same time held back by the iron grip of his childhood, Alexander Portnoy is one of Philip Roths most intriguing and hilarious characters. The thing about Portnoy’s Complaint is that, unlike some books we’ve seen Don reading, like Dante’s Inferno, there isn’t an obvious meaning to Don’s choice of reading, unless you want to get into the mommy/sex issues that both Don and Roth’s most famous character have. But it is 1969, the year that is often cited as the one when the cultural landscape dramatically shifted in America, and Roth’s novel was a big part of that. Most of those new things, however, seem to manifest in pretty bad ways Don is frozen by doubt and addiction, Roger’s daughter is off with a bunch of hippies, and we haven’t yet seen Bob Benson and his amazing shorts. This season of Mad Men is all about change and invention. Witty and ironic fiction of noted American writer Philip Milton Roth includes the novels Portnoys Complaint (1969), American Pastoral (1997), and The Human Stain (2000). Yet those other titles would just be an extra-nice surprise, as last night’s episode featured Don on his couch, reading the book I most expected to see: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. The Godfather, Kurt Vonnegut, and Margaret Atwood could all still show up in this two-part final season of our favorite show about horrible men in nice suits. A while ago I made an educated guess that this season of Mad Men would feature one or two books that came out in 1969.
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