Kenneth Cosgrove may now be a bitter ex-employee of Sterling Cooper and partners. But in the first season of Mad Men, way back in 1960, he was an aspiring writer, with a novel in his top drawer.
Ken’s literary ability was such that he managed to get his short story, Tapping a Maple on a Cool Vermont Morning, printed in the Atlantic Monthly, much to the annoyance of his colleagues.
Cosgrove’s literary ambitions didn’t end there. He also wrote sci-fi for a while under the pen name Ben Hargrove.
But in a case of art imitating life imitating art, the real Atlantic Monthly delved into its fictional archives to dig out Cosgrove’s minor masterpiece. A decision conveniently timed to run the weekend of Mad Men’s grand finale.
So let’s assume that, after Sunday’s finale, Ken managed to trade his job as Dow Chemicals’ advertising buyer to follow in the footsteps of other ad men and women who became fine writers – like Salman Rushdie, F Scott Fitzgerald and Fay Weldon.
