“Why is it that all advertising people I’ve ever known want to get out? They all want to build their own schooners, plank by plank, and sail to the Tasman Sea. I know a copywriter at Creighton Insko Dale. At lunch one day he started to cry.”

Or so says a character in a book by Don DeLillo, former copywriter. 

The Awl profiles the before-and-after careers of DeLillo and five other authors who started in advertising.