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At Random, The Reminiscences
'I've had a very happy life. I've been as lucky as can be...'That's America's most famous book publisher, looking back with buoyant enthusiasm at the public and private events of his crowded lifetime. In story after fascinating story, Bennett Cerf recalls the people he knew and offers his candid opinions of them.
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First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
Bennett Cerf
137 books27 followersBennett Cerf was one of the founders of the publishing firm Random House. Cerf was known for his compilations of jokes and stories, and for his regular appearances on the panel game show What's My Line?
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
August 28, 2012
[Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (cclapcenter.com). I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.]
Recently at a party, someone favorably compared me to Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf; and that inspired me to read his autobiography, because not only did I know barely anything about him, but indeed about the entire formation of the modern American publishing industry, other than the vague realization like many others that there used to be no publishing companies, then at some point a lot, then at some point a few again, which then all got bought up by multinational corporate conglomerates in the 1970s and '80s. And the big surprise is that this turned out to be one of the most riveting and entertaining books I've read in years, precisely because there turned out to be so much drama and so many anecdotes leading to the rise of American literature in the early 20th century into the mainstream powerhouse it now is, and to the establishment and then consolidation of what's now known as the "Big Six" in the publishing world, around for so long and so powerful for so long that we tend to now think of them as unmoving monoliths. But when Random House first started almost a hundred years ago, it was just Cerf and his buddy around, two stockbrokers with naughty sides who enjoyed hanging out with bohemians, and thought it'd be a lot more fun to publish them for a living than work at a bank; and that's essentially how this raconteur's memoirs read, as half business and half drunken party all the time back then, with not only all the eventual giants of the publishing industry turning out to have all been friends, but with all of them essentially flying by the seat of their pants just as the Early Modernist era was starting to take shape, what seems now like a deliberate and crafty plan to change the entire arts community as they knew it, but in reality more like all these people just throwing crap at a wall every day and seeing what stuck.
And man, Cerf has just a ton of anecdotes to share here, both praising and pissy in nature, with dozens of pages in this fast-turning and endlessly titillating book devoted to embarrassingly personal tales regarding Theodore Dreiser, Dorothy Parker, James Michener, William Faulkner, Ayn Rand, and the scores of other writers and drinking pals who he almost single-handedly turned into the literary icons we know today. Along the way, then, he also offers up lots of advice for others who want to become editors and publishers, stuff that surprisingly mirrors a lot of the best lessons of the high-tech startup industry: avoid outside money (either loans or investments) as long as you possibly can, treat your talent like the rock stars they are, be funny when your competitors are serious and serious when they're funny, and pounce on those competitors' employees in the cases where they become disgruntled with their working conditions and quit. Bawdy, confessional, laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes jaw-droppingly unbelievable in the sheer audacity of these arts-industry mavericks, this is easily one of the best "insider" books you'll ever read about the publishing industry, and it comes strongly recommended to those like me who are interested in learning more.
Recently at a party, someone favorably compared me to Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf; and that inspired me to read his autobiography, because not only did I know barely anything about him, but indeed about the entire formation of the modern American publishing industry, other than the vague realization like many others that there used to be no publishing companies, then at some point a lot, then at some point a few again, which then all got bought up by multinational corporate conglomerates in the 1970s and '80s. And the big surprise is that this turned out to be one of the most riveting and entertaining books I've read in years, precisely because there turned out to be so much drama and so many anecdotes leading to the rise of American literature in the early 20th century into the mainstream powerhouse it now is, and to the establishment and then consolidation of what's now known as the "Big Six" in the publishing world, around for so long and so powerful for so long that we tend to now think of them as unmoving monoliths. But when Random House first started almost a hundred years ago, it was just Cerf and his buddy around, two stockbrokers with naughty sides who enjoyed hanging out with bohemians, and thought it'd be a lot more fun to publish them for a living than work at a bank; and that's essentially how this raconteur's memoirs read, as half business and half drunken party all the time back then, with not only all the eventual giants of the publishing industry turning out to have all been friends, but with all of them essentially flying by the seat of their pants just as the Early Modernist era was starting to take shape, what seems now like a deliberate and crafty plan to change the entire arts community as they knew it, but in reality more like all these people just throwing crap at a wall every day and seeing what stuck.
And man, Cerf has just a ton of anecdotes to share here, both praising and pissy in nature, with dozens of pages in this fast-turning and endlessly titillating book devoted to embarrassingly personal tales regarding Theodore Dreiser, Dorothy Parker, James Michener, William Faulkner, Ayn Rand, and the scores of other writers and drinking pals who he almost single-handedly turned into the literary icons we know today. Along the way, then, he also offers up lots of advice for others who want to become editors and publishers, stuff that surprisingly mirrors a lot of the best lessons of the high-tech startup industry: avoid outside money (either loans or investments) as long as you possibly can, treat your talent like the rock stars they are, be funny when your competitors are serious and serious when they're funny, and pounce on those competitors' employees in the cases where they become disgruntled with their working conditions and quit. Bawdy, confessional, laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes jaw-droppingly unbelievable in the sheer audacity of these arts-industry mavericks, this is easily one of the best "insider" books you'll ever read about the publishing industry, and it comes strongly recommended to those like me who are interested in learning more.
February 16, 2019
If you're on Goodreads -- as indeed you are -- you can thank, in part, Mr. Bennett Cerf for bringing you here.
That's because Cerf's mark on 20th-century publishing is so deep that there's a 100-percent chance that you've read something -- or more likely, many things -- that Cerf had his hands on. It's not for nothing that one of my bookshelf tags on here is "Bennett-Cerf-iana."
In the 1920s, Cerf and an associate, Donald Klopfer, founded Random House, and the rest was history. Name any great author, any public mover-and-shaker, any celebrity, of the last century -- Cerf probably knew them or worked with them. He might even have known your old aunt, too, because the guy not only pressed flesh with the rich and powerful but got out to the sticks at every opportunity to lecture and market his company's books to everyday people. Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon; you could probably play three degrees of Bennett Cert and get better results.
Bennett Cerf had you at hello. Those Beginner Books and Dr. Seuss Books that you first picked up as a toddler? Cerf. Those books by Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, John O'Hara, Eugene O'Neill, James Michener, Truman Capote, Ayn Rand, and others. Cerf had them all under contract or their works licensed at one time or another.
It was never supposed to be that way, but Cerf himself in the book uses the phrase "that Old Cerf luck" to describe the arc of his career. The man was Teflon; everything went his way. When he co-founded Random House, he envisioned it as an itsy specialty boutique publishing house, almost a side venture to his various WASP-ish pursuits. But, as always seemed to be the case with Cerf, he was at the right place at the right time, and his little venture became a behemoth in short order, the biggest and most famous publishing house in the world, purveyor of the classy and affordable Modern Library that brought great lit to the masses, as well as revolutionizing branding, marketing and distribution in the industry.
Bennett had a charmed life from the get-go, picking up a cool $100K+ from dead gramps -- not quite Jay Gatsby but not a bad way to get a young man started off either -- and this in 1910's dollars. Bennett was white, male, had money in the bank, had a knack for artsy and social pursuits and a sharp business acumen, and enough naivete to make the right decisions because he didn't know any better. After that it was Columbia journalism school, dances on Long Island, brokerage jobs on Wall Street, jaunts to the philharmonic -- in New York, Philadelphia, wherever. And connections, lots and lots of connections in that rarefied world of East coast money and the arts. Bennett was a name dropper, and why not? The sumbitch knew EVERYBODY who was anybody. In one of the earliest recollections in this book, Cerf talks about attending a baseball game with Theodore Dreiser. Cerf didn't just do stuff, he did stuff in the best circles. Bennett started out too green to know the rules, so he just bypassed them. He went right to the authors and the owners of small presses to seal the deals, making end runs around the old-school winers and diners who hemmed and hawed. It worked, just like everything else did for him. Bennett was in the revolving door of the metropolis but didn't spin around in it; he came out the other side right away into the golden lobby. It seemed, at times, like an American version of Evelyn Waugh; that old boy Bennett flitting about in his menage a trois, of sorts, with his best friend Donald Klopfer's girlfriend, everyone all so sporting about it, and they all loved each other so much.
Most Americans of mid-20th-century stripe will have known Bennett Cerf best as a regular panelist on the original Sunday night, black-and-white version of the game show, What's My Line? for the course of its TV run from 1950 to 1967. On the show, Cerf had a certain fumbling "Dad joke" wit and an uncanny ability to sniff out the avocations of the contestants, not hard for a man who got around.
When Cerf took that TV gig, he broke a barrier of sorts. Some in his circle were snooty about the idea of a man in the "legitimate arts" lowering himself to appearing on such a thing. But Cerf was no dummy, constantly finding ways on the show to plug Random House and its books. It was the best free advertising subversion ever angled in the history of show biz, very likely, because it made Random House a household name.
Before I started watching, rather obsessively, these old game show episodes on Youtube in recent years, getting familiar with Mr. Cerf's devilish ways and flirtatious bent, I had mainly known Cerf as an author. Anyone who has ever gone into a Goodwill looking for bargain vintage books cannot have helped seeing the joke books compiled or penned by Cerf littering the shelves. I bought and partially read a few; they're trifles that demonstrate no particular literary skill on Bennett's part and are definitely of another era, amusements from a time when amusements were more precious and few, with few distractions to divert one from their full appreciative attention.
Cerf played an important part in the cultural, literary free-speech wars. He was instrumental in getting James Joyce's Ulysses published in the United States, paying Joyce a generous non-refundable advance when the author was in dire poverty, with no guarantee that the legal case to allow publication of the book would succeed. You gotta give huge props to Bennett for this, but it was a good gamble -- the pent-up public interest in a forbidden controversial book was self-fulfilling marketing, and Cerf well knew it. Cerf's absolute masterstroke was to have literary critics' opinions pasted inside the book so that those bits of "testimony" could be used as evidence in court (thus skirting a legal technicality) and having that same copy imported and purposely seized by customs so it could be used as evidence in the hearing by a sympathetic judge. If nothing else proves what a fucking boss Cerf was, this was it.
Anyone interested in books and authors will be envious and blown away by the number of literary giants Cerf worked with. The names of famous authors is too extensive to even list here. Some of them are mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Bennett knew all the members of the Algonquin Round Table. It's quite likely that Cerf met more famous people: stars, authors, presidents, etc., than anyone who has ever lived. He was the kind of guy who could, and did, have Frank Sinatra hang at his house and spend the night. He might have Burl Ives over to sing sea shanties at dinner, or Irving Berlin to tinkle away at the piano. Yeah, it's Bennett's world and we're just living in it.
Even when presented with a dilemma, Cerf seemed to always find the out. In the middle of World War II one of Cerf's writers was scribing an account of a Canadian airman who claimed wartime heroics, including refusing to crack under Nazi torture. The title of the book was to be: The Man Who Wouldn't Talk. Problem was, it wasn't true; the hero was a fraud and the book project seemed dead. But Cerf was a cagey guy, a master promoter and businessman. He reasoned, hey, it's still a story. He simply changed the book's title to The Man Who Talked Too Much. -- and it became a best seller.
When other publishing houses fired people, Cerf would scoop up the cream of the crop, gaining more of the best editors and reps for himself. When he hired one fired Doubleday editor, for instance, author Sinclair Lewis and several other prominent authors came with him. It's the very move Charles Foster Kane pulled in the movie Citizen Kane to stymie the competition.
Cerf was a shrewd negotiator who knew when to relent and when to hold firm. He dickered with the mighty General David Sarnoff over a relatively tiny sum when Sarnoff's RCA wanted to buy Random House. Sarnoff eventually caved, which was unprecedented. Sometimes Cerf would overpay, as when he wanted to anthologize some work by the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw refused to grant the rights to be published in anthologized form, so Cerf flew to London to meet the cranky Shaw, who continued to hold the line, until he asked: "What are you paying Eugene O'Neill for the rights to publish his?" After a fashion, Shaw, not expecting to be taken seriously, said Random House could print one of his plays if he was paid twice as much as O'Neill. Cerf, understanding Shaw's ego and need to save face, relented and paid double. Cerf often paid more when it came down to buying and publishing the best. At that stage he had no shareholders to justify his expenditures and actions to.
One of my favorite bits of Cerfiana provided fun fodder for my review of Melville's Moby Dick (check it out, if you are able). On page 72 of this book, Cerf explains the infamous snafu whereby illustrator Rockwell Kent's name was printed on the cover of Random House's edition of Moby Dick but not Herman Melville's. Cerf took the blame for this one and gets points for honesty.
NOW, the real review:
So, what's the deal with my relatively low rating for this book? Let's be clear and put it this way: the book is an absolute treasure trove, filled with amazing encounters, personages, deals, and the kind of general hubbub you would expect from the memoirs of someone who was basically at the center of the universe. If you want to know about the publishing world of the "golden age" and fascinating tidbits about the media icons of that time, this is rich ground to graze.
The fault, I think, is partly Cerf's and partly the people who cobbled together this book. This memoir was like a rugged chest full of gold doubloons and polished emeralds that were buried in a mixture of sand and broken glass that you had to sift through bare-handed to retrieve. The rewards were great but the digging was painful.
Cerf, in fact, did not complete this book himself. He was in the fledgling stages of working on this memoir when he died unexpectedly at the age of 73 in 1971 at his cozy country retreat in Mount Kisco, N.Y., of undisclosed causes. Cerf had extensive diaries to draw from, was in the process of compiling old documents, relaying thoughts into a tape recorder, working with a secretary. He'd just taped a multi-part oral history of reminiscences, so the stuff was gelling.
A few years later, the family pulled together the best of this material, unaltered, and wrenched it into a mostly chronological highlights reel and published it in 1977. And that's the text we are left with. To call it wanting is an understatement, and the blame might be assigned evenly to Cerf and to his family.
An argument could be made that the book would have been more flowing, more artful and more cohesive had Cerf finished it properly, instead of being the loose and lazy, doddering, tea-timey, chit-chatty thing it is. The writing comes off more like an off-the-cuff speech to the ladies' book club than a crafted work. I doubt that Cerf himself, as a publisher, would have accepted his own biography for publication in this form. In my opinion, the family should have assigned this material to a master biographer, someone like A. Scott Berg, who crafted a masterly biography of the editor Max Perkins, for instance.
But, let's speculate on what might have happened if Cerf HAD finished the book. Do we have much evidence that Cerf had the literary chops to pull it off? Or did he have a blind spot about his own skills? Some bits of writing that Cerf cites in the book as among his best are in fact thoroughly pedestrian efforts, and nowhere in these jottings did Cerf demonstrate the slightest iota of introspection or contextual reflection about the gravitas of his life, his dealings and relationships. It's all presented on the nose and at face value. It reads like a diary, in other words.
There's a revealing passage in TV producer Gil Fates' book about his show, What's My Line?... where he talks about Cerf, and Cerf's own writing in particular. In a nutshell, he says that, despite Cerf's place at the epicenter of the arts and publishing, all that literary magic dust did not rub off on the publisher. Fates wrote that Cerf's own writing lacked flair and any sign of introspection or deep thought whatsoever. After reading this memoir, I have to think he was right.
And that's too bad, but, still, I'm glad I read it, and I learned a lot. Cerf stood tall at the center of a world that none of us will know and for that, this tome has plenty of archeological value.
eg, kr '19
That's because Cerf's mark on 20th-century publishing is so deep that there's a 100-percent chance that you've read something -- or more likely, many things -- that Cerf had his hands on. It's not for nothing that one of my bookshelf tags on here is "Bennett-Cerf-iana."
In the 1920s, Cerf and an associate, Donald Klopfer, founded Random House, and the rest was history. Name any great author, any public mover-and-shaker, any celebrity, of the last century -- Cerf probably knew them or worked with them. He might even have known your old aunt, too, because the guy not only pressed flesh with the rich and powerful but got out to the sticks at every opportunity to lecture and market his company's books to everyday people. Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon; you could probably play three degrees of Bennett Cert and get better results.
Bennett Cerf had you at hello. Those Beginner Books and Dr. Seuss Books that you first picked up as a toddler? Cerf. Those books by Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, John O'Hara, Eugene O'Neill, James Michener, Truman Capote, Ayn Rand, and others. Cerf had them all under contract or their works licensed at one time or another.
It was never supposed to be that way, but Cerf himself in the book uses the phrase "that Old Cerf luck" to describe the arc of his career. The man was Teflon; everything went his way. When he co-founded Random House, he envisioned it as an itsy specialty boutique publishing house, almost a side venture to his various WASP-ish pursuits. But, as always seemed to be the case with Cerf, he was at the right place at the right time, and his little venture became a behemoth in short order, the biggest and most famous publishing house in the world, purveyor of the classy and affordable Modern Library that brought great lit to the masses, as well as revolutionizing branding, marketing and distribution in the industry.
Bennett had a charmed life from the get-go, picking up a cool $100K+ from dead gramps -- not quite Jay Gatsby but not a bad way to get a young man started off either -- and this in 1910's dollars. Bennett was white, male, had money in the bank, had a knack for artsy and social pursuits and a sharp business acumen, and enough naivete to make the right decisions because he didn't know any better. After that it was Columbia journalism school, dances on Long Island, brokerage jobs on Wall Street, jaunts to the philharmonic -- in New York, Philadelphia, wherever. And connections, lots and lots of connections in that rarefied world of East coast money and the arts. Bennett was a name dropper, and why not? The sumbitch knew EVERYBODY who was anybody. In one of the earliest recollections in this book, Cerf talks about attending a baseball game with Theodore Dreiser. Cerf didn't just do stuff, he did stuff in the best circles. Bennett started out too green to know the rules, so he just bypassed them. He went right to the authors and the owners of small presses to seal the deals, making end runs around the old-school winers and diners who hemmed and hawed. It worked, just like everything else did for him. Bennett was in the revolving door of the metropolis but didn't spin around in it; he came out the other side right away into the golden lobby. It seemed, at times, like an American version of Evelyn Waugh; that old boy Bennett flitting about in his menage a trois, of sorts, with his best friend Donald Klopfer's girlfriend, everyone all so sporting about it, and they all loved each other so much.
Most Americans of mid-20th-century stripe will have known Bennett Cerf best as a regular panelist on the original Sunday night, black-and-white version of the game show, What's My Line? for the course of its TV run from 1950 to 1967. On the show, Cerf had a certain fumbling "Dad joke" wit and an uncanny ability to sniff out the avocations of the contestants, not hard for a man who got around.
When Cerf took that TV gig, he broke a barrier of sorts. Some in his circle were snooty about the idea of a man in the "legitimate arts" lowering himself to appearing on such a thing. But Cerf was no dummy, constantly finding ways on the show to plug Random House and its books. It was the best free advertising subversion ever angled in the history of show biz, very likely, because it made Random House a household name.
Before I started watching, rather obsessively, these old game show episodes on Youtube in recent years, getting familiar with Mr. Cerf's devilish ways and flirtatious bent, I had mainly known Cerf as an author. Anyone who has ever gone into a Goodwill looking for bargain vintage books cannot have helped seeing the joke books compiled or penned by Cerf littering the shelves. I bought and partially read a few; they're trifles that demonstrate no particular literary skill on Bennett's part and are definitely of another era, amusements from a time when amusements were more precious and few, with few distractions to divert one from their full appreciative attention.
Cerf played an important part in the cultural, literary free-speech wars. He was instrumental in getting James Joyce's Ulysses published in the United States, paying Joyce a generous non-refundable advance when the author was in dire poverty, with no guarantee that the legal case to allow publication of the book would succeed. You gotta give huge props to Bennett for this, but it was a good gamble -- the pent-up public interest in a forbidden controversial book was self-fulfilling marketing, and Cerf well knew it. Cerf's absolute masterstroke was to have literary critics' opinions pasted inside the book so that those bits of "testimony" could be used as evidence in court (thus skirting a legal technicality) and having that same copy imported and purposely seized by customs so it could be used as evidence in the hearing by a sympathetic judge. If nothing else proves what a fucking boss Cerf was, this was it.
Anyone interested in books and authors will be envious and blown away by the number of literary giants Cerf worked with. The names of famous authors is too extensive to even list here. Some of them are mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Bennett knew all the members of the Algonquin Round Table. It's quite likely that Cerf met more famous people: stars, authors, presidents, etc., than anyone who has ever lived. He was the kind of guy who could, and did, have Frank Sinatra hang at his house and spend the night. He might have Burl Ives over to sing sea shanties at dinner, or Irving Berlin to tinkle away at the piano. Yeah, it's Bennett's world and we're just living in it.
Even when presented with a dilemma, Cerf seemed to always find the out. In the middle of World War II one of Cerf's writers was scribing an account of a Canadian airman who claimed wartime heroics, including refusing to crack under Nazi torture. The title of the book was to be: The Man Who Wouldn't Talk. Problem was, it wasn't true; the hero was a fraud and the book project seemed dead. But Cerf was a cagey guy, a master promoter and businessman. He reasoned, hey, it's still a story. He simply changed the book's title to The Man Who Talked Too Much. -- and it became a best seller.
When other publishing houses fired people, Cerf would scoop up the cream of the crop, gaining more of the best editors and reps for himself. When he hired one fired Doubleday editor, for instance, author Sinclair Lewis and several other prominent authors came with him. It's the very move Charles Foster Kane pulled in the movie Citizen Kane to stymie the competition.
Cerf was a shrewd negotiator who knew when to relent and when to hold firm. He dickered with the mighty General David Sarnoff over a relatively tiny sum when Sarnoff's RCA wanted to buy Random House. Sarnoff eventually caved, which was unprecedented. Sometimes Cerf would overpay, as when he wanted to anthologize some work by the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw refused to grant the rights to be published in anthologized form, so Cerf flew to London to meet the cranky Shaw, who continued to hold the line, until he asked: "What are you paying Eugene O'Neill for the rights to publish his?" After a fashion, Shaw, not expecting to be taken seriously, said Random House could print one of his plays if he was paid twice as much as O'Neill. Cerf, understanding Shaw's ego and need to save face, relented and paid double. Cerf often paid more when it came down to buying and publishing the best. At that stage he had no shareholders to justify his expenditures and actions to.
One of my favorite bits of Cerfiana provided fun fodder for my review of Melville's Moby Dick (check it out, if you are able). On page 72 of this book, Cerf explains the infamous snafu whereby illustrator Rockwell Kent's name was printed on the cover of Random House's edition of Moby Dick but not Herman Melville's. Cerf took the blame for this one and gets points for honesty.
NOW, the real review:
So, what's the deal with my relatively low rating for this book? Let's be clear and put it this way: the book is an absolute treasure trove, filled with amazing encounters, personages, deals, and the kind of general hubbub you would expect from the memoirs of someone who was basically at the center of the universe. If you want to know about the publishing world of the "golden age" and fascinating tidbits about the media icons of that time, this is rich ground to graze.
The fault, I think, is partly Cerf's and partly the people who cobbled together this book. This memoir was like a rugged chest full of gold doubloons and polished emeralds that were buried in a mixture of sand and broken glass that you had to sift through bare-handed to retrieve. The rewards were great but the digging was painful.
Cerf, in fact, did not complete this book himself. He was in the fledgling stages of working on this memoir when he died unexpectedly at the age of 73 in 1971 at his cozy country retreat in Mount Kisco, N.Y., of undisclosed causes. Cerf had extensive diaries to draw from, was in the process of compiling old documents, relaying thoughts into a tape recorder, working with a secretary. He'd just taped a multi-part oral history of reminiscences, so the stuff was gelling.
A few years later, the family pulled together the best of this material, unaltered, and wrenched it into a mostly chronological highlights reel and published it in 1977. And that's the text we are left with. To call it wanting is an understatement, and the blame might be assigned evenly to Cerf and to his family.
An argument could be made that the book would have been more flowing, more artful and more cohesive had Cerf finished it properly, instead of being the loose and lazy, doddering, tea-timey, chit-chatty thing it is. The writing comes off more like an off-the-cuff speech to the ladies' book club than a crafted work. I doubt that Cerf himself, as a publisher, would have accepted his own biography for publication in this form. In my opinion, the family should have assigned this material to a master biographer, someone like A. Scott Berg, who crafted a masterly biography of the editor Max Perkins, for instance.
But, let's speculate on what might have happened if Cerf HAD finished the book. Do we have much evidence that Cerf had the literary chops to pull it off? Or did he have a blind spot about his own skills? Some bits of writing that Cerf cites in the book as among his best are in fact thoroughly pedestrian efforts, and nowhere in these jottings did Cerf demonstrate the slightest iota of introspection or contextual reflection about the gravitas of his life, his dealings and relationships. It's all presented on the nose and at face value. It reads like a diary, in other words.
There's a revealing passage in TV producer Gil Fates' book about his show, What's My Line?... where he talks about Cerf, and Cerf's own writing in particular. In a nutshell, he says that, despite Cerf's place at the epicenter of the arts and publishing, all that literary magic dust did not rub off on the publisher. Fates wrote that Cerf's own writing lacked flair and any sign of introspection or deep thought whatsoever. After reading this memoir, I have to think he was right.
And that's too bad, but, still, I'm glad I read it, and I learned a lot. Cerf stood tall at the center of a world that none of us will know and for that, this tome has plenty of archeological value.
eg, kr '19
September 6, 2018
Jovial reminiscences from the master of Random House publishers in New York City, best known to Fifites Americans as the punster who usually had a dictionary to sell on TV's "What's My Line." In this book, we learn that the Cerf family is of Alsatian Jewish origin, that Bennett grew up an overachiever and made many enduring friends while a student at Columbia, that he took a little experimental publisher called Modern Library and helped build it into a middle-class mainstay of literate Americans in the Twentieth Century, and of course that he helped shepherd the careers of his favorite authors, among them Truman Capote. Engaging, perhaps a little too humble, a quick read but not all that substantial. For Manhattan-publishing-world completionists, mainly.
January 27, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Bennett is a great storyteller, a bit pretentious, but I like him. The man knew EVERYONE.
June 26, 2012
This book should be required reading for those who work in book publishing, but any bibliophile will definitely appreciate it. Bennett Cerf was an outrageous character with a passion for creating good books, finesse for dealing with authors (Ayn Rand, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill, among many others), and an unbeatable sense of humor that will make you laugh out loud. His reminiscences delighted me so that I missed my stop on the subway while reading them and laughing out loud.
August 4, 2016
I don't doubt that Bennett Cerf was an interesting and charming enough man to establish the world's biggest publishing house, but the entire book ("Reminiscences") is filled with things like: "Phyllis and I love Harold's son Tom. We've watched him grow up. He's one of my favorite people, Tom." That's the only mention of Tom (could be anyone) and since the vast majority of the book is just Cerf recalling memories without any meat or substance or introspection, this one didn't work for me.
March 8, 2017
Me ha encantado. Por divertido, por curioso, por leyenda de la creación de un mónstruo editorial. Por todo
December 8, 2009
Bennett Cerf truly led a charmed life. After a brief stint on Wall Street, he fell into publishing and founded Random House, to this day (although it is now owned by Bertlesmann) the world's largest English language book publisher.
This book, more a collection of anecdotes than a memoir (it was compiled posthumously from interviews and notes), tells many amusing stories of life in the book business. Cerf is a great storyteller, and makes his life sound like a grand lark. Anyone who loves books can find something to tickle the fancy; there are stories about Dorothy Parker, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, Moss Hart, James Michener, to name a few. Having just read Atlas Shrugged, I particularly loved the story of Ayn Rand (whose politics Cerf hated, but he found her personally mesmerizing) and Cerf's attempt to get her to edit John Galt's windy, redundant speech.
This book was a delight from start to finish, and makes me miss the Game Show Network's airing of "What's My Line?" even more.
This book, more a collection of anecdotes than a memoir (it was compiled posthumously from interviews and notes), tells many amusing stories of life in the book business. Cerf is a great storyteller, and makes his life sound like a grand lark. Anyone who loves books can find something to tickle the fancy; there are stories about Dorothy Parker, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, Moss Hart, James Michener, to name a few. Having just read Atlas Shrugged, I particularly loved the story of Ayn Rand (whose politics Cerf hated, but he found her personally mesmerizing) and Cerf's attempt to get her to edit John Galt's windy, redundant speech.
This book was a delight from start to finish, and makes me miss the Game Show Network's airing of "What's My Line?" even more.
December 30, 2017
Qué libro tan entretenido! Las memorias de Bennett Cerf son igual de interesantes que los libros que editó y publicó. Co-fundador de Random House, comparte de una manera muy divertida cómo descubrió y se aventuró a publicar escritores como William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Dr. Seuss, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein -entre muchos más-, y cómo sus relaciones personales lo marcaron. Imagínense lo interesante que ha de haber sido ser el mejor amigo de todo el círculo de escritores estadounidenses más importante y relevante de su época, hacer frente al negocio de los libros durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pasar de ser una editorial casera a ser la editorial más grande del mundo de habla inglesa. La filosofía de Benett además es ejemplar, un hombre íntegro, de palabra, con visión, con valores, muy humano, con excelente sentido del humor que tuvo éxito porque nunca fue por el dinero sino por el amor a los libros y su pasión por descubrir escritores y ayudarlos a que ellos tuvieran éxito con sus libros. Por donde vean este libro, vale mucho la pena leerlo.
August 6, 2010
I picked up this book because I had the good fortune to meet Bennett Cerf's son Chris through the Columbia Publishing Course. Anyone going into book publishing should definitely give this book a read, as it provides an entertaining look at the early 20th century publishing world, among other things.
The book is made up of chapters of Bennett Cerf's (the co-founder of Random House) life, stories, and thought processes. A lot of it is gleaned from oral interviews with Cerf, so some of the stories translate better into writing than others. All in all a great book and it was great to hear the behind-the-scenes stories about certain authors (Faulkner, Lewis, Rand.) Cerf's gregarious and good-natured personality are woven into the text and you really feel like you are sitting in his living room and he is regaling you with these great stories of his life.
The book is made up of chapters of Bennett Cerf's (the co-founder of Random House) life, stories, and thought processes. A lot of it is gleaned from oral interviews with Cerf, so some of the stories translate better into writing than others. All in all a great book and it was great to hear the behind-the-scenes stories about certain authors (Faulkner, Lewis, Rand.) Cerf's gregarious and good-natured personality are woven into the text and you really feel like you are sitting in his living room and he is regaling you with these great stories of his life.
August 21, 2015
This was another one of those books which I have had for well over 30 years but never picked up to read. But now that I am low on books to pick from, I did . I had expected to read about the Bennett cerf form WHAT IS MY LINE tv show. I had forgot that he was the owner of Random house publishers.. The book was wonderful ,Cerf came into contact with all the authors of his day and his day was the time period of my favorite authors.
February 8, 2022
I loved reading about the beginnings of the publishing industry. I was totally born in the wrong decade...
March 29, 2009
Published after his death, this memoir collects various interviews Cerf did with the Columbia school of journalism about publishing and his role in founding Random House.
April 1, 2014
Es un libro muy interesante y cuenta de forma muy amena cómo se creó el gigante que es Random House. Me cayó genial Bennett Cerf, me han gustado sus anécdotas y su forma de ver las cosas.
September 15, 2020
The director of a production department at W. W. Norton recommended this book to me in an interview a few years ago. I asked "What book about the publishing industry would you recommend?" and I must agree it's a great peak into the trade publishing world. While I'm in publishing, I'm many times removed from the world of Random House (now PRH), and I still quite enjoyed this book. Not only is it fun to learn more about Cerf, but there's some good notes about editors and publishing houses here too.
While this is in part an autobiography, it's more like scattered notes -- the chapters are short snippets -- on the fun times he's had and people he's met. I had no idea Cerf rubbed elbows with so many famous people: Alfred A. Knopf, Willa Cather, Eugene O'Neill, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, W. H. Auden, George Bernard Shaw, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Theodor Seuss Geisel, Frank Sinatra, FDR, Truman Capote, Ayn Rand, and more people I don't know. Cerf is slightly impressed with himself, but not enormously so, and he's self-aware, so his pride doesn't get in the way too much. He is a skilled writer and has a good sense of comedic timing.
While this is in part an autobiography, it's more like scattered notes -- the chapters are short snippets -- on the fun times he's had and people he's met. I had no idea Cerf rubbed elbows with so many famous people: Alfred A. Knopf, Willa Cather, Eugene O'Neill, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, W. H. Auden, George Bernard Shaw, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Theodor Seuss Geisel, Frank Sinatra, FDR, Truman Capote, Ayn Rand, and more people I don't know. Cerf is slightly impressed with himself, but not enormously so, and he's self-aware, so his pride doesn't get in the way too much. He is a skilled writer and has a good sense of comedic timing.
September 2, 2022
Everyone in publishing should read this. Not much has changed in all these years. Book are still a low margin business. It's still difficult for first-novel authors. Business integrity matters. I keep rereading all the pages I tabbed. I read that a bio is coming out in the next couple years and can't wait to read it.
January 9, 2025
Quite good account of his life and work in publishing. Kind of like having an old friend remembering. Stories about authors and family, etc
April 4, 2019
As soon as I opened At Random by Bennet Cerf, I felt as though he was sitting across from me relating to me the tales of his publishing adventures. The world of publishing in the early twentieth century was quite different than our current world of self-publishing and e-books.
There is a bit of personal biography, but mostly Cerf relates tales of some of the many authors his company published over the years—interesting people. I came away from this book with a much longer reading list than when I started. This also gives an interesting perspective to events of the time.
There is a bit of personal biography, but mostly Cerf relates tales of some of the many authors his company published over the years—interesting people. I came away from this book with a much longer reading list than when I started. This also gives an interesting perspective to events of the time.
April 9, 2019
《我与兰登书屋：贝内特·瑟夫回忆录》（美）贝内特·瑟夫。
很幽默，好多地方笑出声，哈哈。书后面的作者、书影名称的中英对照很贴心，不过大部分都没有中文版。
要是有人把他的成功归因于幸运，莫斯就反驳说：“没有人会成天坐在那里说，‘今天我们能为莫斯·哈特做些什么’幸运都是你创造的。”
很幽默，好多地方笑出声，哈哈。书后面的作者、书影名称的中英对照很贴心，不过大部分都没有中文版。
要是有人把他的成功归因于幸运，莫斯就反驳说：“没有人会成天坐在那里说，‘今天我们能为莫斯·哈特做些什么’幸运都是你创造的。”
February 1, 2013
I remember my father introducing me to Bennett Cerf while on What's My Line. I was pretty small and it was just a name and game I couldn't follow. Then a few years ago What's My Line started being shown on late night television. After taping it for several years I think I've seen all the existing episodes and absolutely love the shows with Dorothy Killgallen, Arlene Francis and Bennet Cerf. Guests panelists are fun but it was the interaction of the three main panel members and John Daly as the host that captures the imagination.
Knowing all that, and that Bennett was President of Random House I really didn't know a lot about his life and this book was the perfect thing to read.
Bennett started a memoir while in his late 60's that he did talking to a reporter. He also was a journaler and kept track of most of his life. When he died suddenly in 1971 his wife and sons took on the task of completing the book using the title he had chosen, At Random.
What a fascinating life Bennett led, starting with making friends in high school and college who go on to become superstars to the amazing array of authors he found, supported and published. If I tried to make a list it would be book length! Just a sampling would be Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein, Ernest Hemmingway, Ayn Rand, and Boris Pasternak.
I loved it and it makes me want to read some of his edited books, short stories and puns, and great authors. Modern Library is still going strong so I need to see about reading some of the titles he talked about in the book.
Oh, just what I need, more books to read!
Knowing all that, and that Bennett was President of Random House I really didn't know a lot about his life and this book was the perfect thing to read.
Bennett started a memoir while in his late 60's that he did talking to a reporter. He also was a journaler and kept track of most of his life. When he died suddenly in 1971 his wife and sons took on the task of completing the book using the title he had chosen, At Random.
What a fascinating life Bennett led, starting with making friends in high school and college who go on to become superstars to the amazing array of authors he found, supported and published. If I tried to make a list it would be book length! Just a sampling would be Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein, Ernest Hemmingway, Ayn Rand, and Boris Pasternak.
I loved it and it makes me want to read some of his edited books, short stories and puns, and great authors. Modern Library is still going strong so I need to see about reading some of the titles he talked about in the book.
Oh, just what I need, more books to read!
August 13, 2017
This is the perfect memoir -- Cerf was well-known as a lecturer and a collector of anecdotes, and his talents shine through every page. He keeps things light, as he seems to have done in his life. This no doubt papers over many issues that might benefit from deeper analysis, but this isn't that sort of book.
Instead we get a romp through his nearly 50 years in publishing, from his apprenticeship under Horace Liveright, to taking The Modern Library independent, to founding Random House in 1927, to becoming a public figure through his 15 years as a panelist on television's What's My Line.
He sold Random House to RCA in 1965, and gave up the presidency in 1967 and the chairmanship in 1970, when he was 72. He speaks of how it was prudent of him and best for the business to arrange his own succession and step away at the top of the game rather than hang on too long. What was best for Random House may not have been best for him. He had made millions selling the company, but he admits to feeling restless, and though the final paragraph boasts of his good health, he died almost immediately after completing this memoir in 1971.
Instead we get a romp through his nearly 50 years in publishing, from his apprenticeship under Horace Liveright, to taking The Modern Library independent, to founding Random House in 1927, to becoming a public figure through his 15 years as a panelist on television's What's My Line.
He sold Random House to RCA in 1965, and gave up the presidency in 1967 and the chairmanship in 1970, when he was 72. He speaks of how it was prudent of him and best for the business to arrange his own succession and step away at the top of the game rather than hang on too long. What was best for Random House may not have been best for him. He had made millions selling the company, but he admits to feeling restless, and though the final paragraph boasts of his good health, he died almost immediately after completing this memoir in 1971.
April 29, 2016
A fascinating and often funny account of how Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer established and built up Random House, the publishing giant. The book is based on interviews with Cerf that were conducted as part of an oral history project at Columbia University. I particularly enjoyed the stories from the beginning, when Cerf and Klopfer were trying to find their way with the company and the opportunity came along for them to purchase the Modern Library, later a Random House staple, from Horace Liveright of Boni & Liveright, who was hard up for cash. Also interesting was how they brought in Alfred Knopf into Random House along with the estimable publishing company that bore his name. If you are interested in books and the publishing industry, you can't go wrong by reading "At Random." I hope to read it again some day.
June 20, 2020
Growing up with books from an early age I still remember the love I had for the books themselves. Thus the encounter with "The Modern Library" editions from Random House was love at first sight. I read my first Faulkner and Dostoevsky in these editions. And I still have a small collection among my personal library today. All this as introduction to why I picked up and devoured this wonderful memoir of the life of a literary publisher. It is a fascinating collection of reminiscences of a life lived with books. These days I can refresh my memory of Bennett Cerf by reference to excerpts of What's My Line on You-tube. He was a man of many talents.
February 5, 2016
Since I've started to watch "What's My Line" reruns , I've developed a fascination with Bennett Cerf. What a charming man he was. And his autobiographical story is just as charming and down to earth. He says "I'm just lucky".. and so he was.. No wonder he had that constant friendly smile on his face.
I love reading his anecdotes about James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Theodore Dreiser, Ayn Rand.. He knew EVERYone!
I ordered one of his other books from Amazon.. I have my eye on two more!
I love reading his anecdotes about James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Theodore Dreiser, Ayn Rand.. He knew EVERYone!
I ordered one of his other books from Amazon.. I have my eye on two more!
October 24, 2007
Since I am a publisher, I am obsessed with reading books about publishers and their presses. And Random House is the biggie of them all. One thing for sure, publishing is a very romantic business. Whatever you are a small press or a huge one like Random. The old School (and Cerf is a member of that school) were visionaries and had great passion in their work. I hope to be among that little club!
July 27, 2011
Sometimes the past grabs you when you browse the biography shelf. I knew about Cerf from early TV, What's My Line, which I certainly would never have watched had I had several hundred other channels. But it passed the time between a childhood mainlining books. And what a verbal motormouth this man is. That just means his revelations of his life in the publishing world can have a riveting quality, but certainly only in spurts.
October 1, 2015
Put together by wife and editor after Cerf's 1971 death, using oral interviews, dairies, notes, etc. VERY informative and entertaining look into the life of a great publisher, businessman, and raconteur. Touches on many great characters of the 20th century. Worth every star. Of course, I AM a big fan of American life and letters of the 1920s through 1950s, so am perhaps predisposed to this book. Would reread.
December 25, 2012
A very well put together biography of Bennett Cerf from notes and writings of Bennett Cerf himself. It describes himself, his author friends and clients, the publishing business and the formation of Random House from the 1920s to 1970. Would consider it a must read for those in the publishing business.
May 6, 2018
Muy entretenido. Un pillo, Cerf, de esos emprendedores livianitos de sangre que además son cultos y tienen algún talento. Una especie inexistente en el extremo austral. Por lo demás es igual que todas las biografías de editores estadounidenses, una historia de éxito, con sus muy interesantes cotilleos sobre la mezquindad de algunos autores y su complicada relación con el dinero.
July 24, 2014
This is one of very few books of which I never wanted to reach the end, and it broke my heart when I did. Bennett was many things, including a vivacious spirit, a terrible punster, a bon vivant, and a man with impeccable taste in literature - these memoirs of the famous founder of Random House publishing were sheer heaven!
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