Writing Career
Raised to be an artist like his father, Dan studied design at the University of Illinois. While there he read Catcher in the Rye, which turned him towards being a writer. His first piece of professional writing was "3 Bears in Search of an Author," a retelling of the same story in the voices of J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. The piece was picked up by Esquire Magazine, and Esquire commissioned a sequel: Hansel and Gretel in the styles of Vladimir Nabakov, Jack Kerouac and Samuel Beckett.
Dan got his B.F.A. degree and moved to Los Angeles, where he received UCLA's first M.F.A. in industrial design. Dissatisfied with industrial design, Dan spent three years in Los Angeles advertising agencies. Meanwhile, Dan's first editor at Esquire had started a new national magazine convinced Dan to move to New York and become its Managing Editor. In New York, Dan began to write a satirical non-fiction book entitled How to be a Jewish Mother, which became the bestselling book of 1965 and allowed him to become a full-time author, journalist, and script writer.
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