Nothing Random

The story of the legendary Random House founder, whose seemingly charmed life at the apogee of the American Century featured a front-row seat on history, an epic cast, and left an enduring cultural legacy

At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett Cerf: witty, beloved, middle-aged panelist on What’s My Line?, whom TV brought into America’s homes each week. They didn’t know the handsome, driven, paradoxical young man of the 1920s who’d vowed to become a great publisher, and a decade later, was. By then, he’d signed Eugene O’Neill, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, and had fought the landmark censorship case that gave Americans the freedom to read James Joyce’s Ulysses.

With his best friend and lifelong business partner Donald Klopfer, and other young Jewish entrepreneurs like the Knopfs and Simon & Schuster, Cerf remade the book business: what was published, and how. In 1925, he and Klopfer had bought the Modern Library and turned it into an institution, then founded Random House, which eventually became a home to Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Ayn Rand, Dr. Seuss, Toni Morrison, James Michener, and many more.

Even before TV, Cerf was a bestselling author and columnist as well as publisher; the show super-charged his celebrity, bringing fame – but also criticism. A brilliant social networker and major influencer before such terms existed, he connected books-Broadway-TV-Hollywood-politics. A fervent democratizer, he published “high,” “low,” and wide, and from the roaring twenties to the swinging sixties collected an incredible array of friends, from George Gershwin to Frank Sinatra, having a fabulous time along the way.

Using interviews with more than 200 individuals; deeply researched archival material; and letters from private collections not previously available, this book recalls Bennett Cerf to vibrant life, bringing booklovers into his world and time, finally giving a true American original his due.