IT MIGHT SOUND BIZARRE TO compare a DM copywriter like Ed McLean with the novelist Nelson Algren. But McLean, who died in August at age 77, shared certain things with Algren, including a Chicago background and a footloose youth.
Like Algren, Navy vet McLean spent time in New Orleans, selling pots and pans door-to-door and writing ads. Then he came to New York during the blizzard of 1947 (at age 20) and lived on the wild side as an aspiring novelist and cartoonist.
Certainly, his early years did not point toward a career in direct marketing. His friends were Wallace Wood, Jerry Robinson, Burne Hogarth and other comic artists, and he did lettering for Will Eisner. And he worked the kind of odd jobs that struggling writers and artists have always held
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