Sterling's Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man
Roger Sterling, the hard-drinking, silver-haired ad man portrayed by John Slattery on AMC’s hit TV show Mad Men, is a straight-faced scene stealer who gets many of the best lines. (“She died like she lived—surrounded by the people she answered phones for.”) And the idea of a real-life book based on the character’s memoir seems promising: if someone well versed in the show’s bible fleshed out some life stories for the self-aggrandizing Sterling, it could be worth reading, right? Alas, no. Despite the handsome, retro book design, this tie-in is a cynical cash-in, with one quote on each of its 171 pages, minus the ones with pictures or section headings. Some of the lines are, indeed, gold (the “wit” promised in the subtitle), but some are merely unmemorable lines of dialogue (surely “Big talent attracts big clients” can’t be “wisdom”). Even the good lines suffer from lack of context because Sterling works best in counterpoint, not as a solo act. Instead of an inspired character riff, what we get here could have been done by an intern with a stack of scripts and a yellow highlighter—perhaps that’s where the “gold” comes in. Fans of the show will do better with Natasha Vargas-Cooper’s Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp through 1960s America (2010). --Keir Graff