An Unhinged History of American Publishing, Part 3.1: The Random House Publishing Group, or: Cerf's Up (in the form of a ghost)

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "about what you'd expect" and 10 being "unimaginably bizarre," the Random House origin story is a solid, oh, 206--and an elegiacally haunting 206 at that.

Bennett Cerf, 1898-1971, founder of Random House, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence. He was kind of like the midcentury-modern American male version of Emma Woodhouse in that way.

Unlike Emma, however—who famously made it to age 20 with very little to distress or vex her—Bennett endured a defining trauma as a teen, and wow did it ever change the course of publishing history.

But wait: I’m getting ahead of myself.

Welcome to the next installment in my Unhinged History of American Publishing series.

This week, I’ll begin tackling Penguin Random House, Snorlax of the publishing industry Pokédex.

Writing entertainingly about—let alone doing justice to—a conglomerate this massive is going to be impossible in a single newsletter. I therefore plan to break it into four—one unhinged history for each of the company’s major adult trade divisions:

• Random House Publishing Group

• Crown Publishing Group

• Knopf/Doubleday Publishing Group

• Penguin Publishing Group

Each of these divisions contains many imprints. Each was also a large company in its own right until some time between 1960 and 2013. The PRH colossus really ain’t that old.

I’m going to start with the Random House Group. I’m not doing that because it’s the oldest of the four (that would be Knopf) or the biggest (Penguin). I’m doing it because I love chaos, and man does Random House ever have the most chaotic origin story I have ever read in my LIFE.

Walk with me.

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