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.

*

Once upon a time, as the sun set on the 19th century, there lived in Harlem a teenage girl named Frederika Wise. Heiress to a tobacco distribution fortune, Frederika would soon come of age, a diamond dans le bon ton of Gilded Age Jewish society.

Frederika had some challenges, socially speaking: she was a middle child of six born to Nathan and Delphina Wise, two of the biggest sourpusses on Earth, and while kind and fun, she was on the plain side. Fortunately for her, however, a family with as much money as the Wises had pretty much infinite slack on charm when it came to the marriage market.

Rich or no, the Wises knew Frederika would need elocution lessons before she made her début. How else would she convey her social status at parties with the affected mid-Atlantic accent that was in fashion at the time? How would she charm suitors by reciting Wordsworth at them in her parlor like a real human person?

The Wises therefore hired Gustave, the go-to guy in their set for elocution lessons, to come tutor their daughter. Everyone loved Gustave. He was a jaunty, mustachioed, bombastic, charming, distractible, optimistic, perpetually-broke Franco-American former baseball player in his 20s. He came highly recommended, even though he had what we’d now characterize as a case of ADHD visible from outer space. His day job had something to do with lithography, but he never made enough money to live that way, so he had to supplement his income with tutoring.

Two guesses what happened when Frederika met Gustave. I can’t even imagine the looks on the Wises’ dour faces when she came home and announced that—surprise!—she was now Mrs. Gustave Cerf. Or when she introduced them to Gustave’s and her only child, Bennett, their brilliant, handsome, motormouthed, doted-upon daddy doppelgänger.

Frederika and Gustave were obsessed with little Bennett. Obsessed. He was precocious! Magnetic! He spoke early, eloquently, and—because of his elecutory parentage—with an arrestingly weird accent, like like someone put Bernie Sanders into a blender with William F. Buckley!

Years later, as he deployed that weird accent to dictate the stories that became At Random, his posthumous memoir, Bennett recalled an idyllic childhood: a Neverland of laughing parents and schoolmates, stickball games and roller skates, set in a Manhattan where America’s future superstars all played together safely in the middle of the street. It was the childhood of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, the kingdom where nobody dies.

It ended in 1914, when someone died. Frederika Cerf had been desperate for a long, long time to give Bennett a sibling, but her body refused to cooperate. She’d tried and tried and tried—and miscarried and miscarried and miscarried. Finally, in 1913, she gave birth to a little girl. The delivery, however, was grisly and traumatizing; the baby only lived two weeks, and Frederika not much longer. She died the day before Bennett’s 16th birthday, age 39.

Bennett immediately became the family CFO. The Wises, who still resented Gustave, bequeathed their grandson $125,000—around $3.7 million in Today Dollars—on the condition that his spendthrift doofus father handle none of it. Which meant Bennett was now in charge. Forever.

*

Once upon a time, there was a young man named Bennett Cerf: only child, star student, showboat, dickens, all-around top drawer fellow. He was the boy all the mothers wanted their sons to befriend, funny and bouncy and kind. He also shouldered far too much responsibility for a teenager, was bereaved of the mother who’d brought all sense, predictability, and gravity to his world, and was adrift in space with his dreamy father.

Not only that, there was this: Bennett would have to live the rest of his life knowing his mother had died trying to have another baby. If he’d only been more, done more, charmed more, been enough for her…would the cataclysm have happened?

Think what a thought like that does to a human life. Think how it would shape a future. You’re probably thinking of something close to what Bennett’s whole deal ended up being.

After high school, Bennett enrolled at Columbia. To the surprise of absolutely no one who knew him, he was BMOC within seconds: vice president of the freshman class; popular in his fraternity; roving-reporter columnist at the Spectator. Within a year also the editor-in-chief of Jester, Columbia’s humor magazine—an unheard-of thing for an underclassman.By the time he graduated—Phi Beta Kappa, of course—he had hordes of friends, hordes, from all walks of campus life.

One of those friends was Donald Klopfer, several years Bennett’s junior. Donald and Bennett met by chance in a music appreciation class. They stayed in touch even after Donald transferred to Williams, but they didn’t really get close until the summer Bennett met Donald’s long distance girlfriend by accident and took a shining to her.

The girlfriend cheated on Donald. She cheated on Donald with Bennett, all summer. Donald knew about this and was miserable and enraged and yet so besotted with this woman that on visits home, he agreed to go out with her AND BENNETT, THE BETTER TO COMPETE FOR HER HAND.

Somehow, this scenario ended with Donald and the girlfriend getting married and Bennett being the best man, because he was just so gosh darn charming.

The marriage didn’t last.

*

Another one of Bennett’s college friends was Dick Simon. Dick Simon was more of a frenemy. During their Columbia days, he’d been a kind of Bizarro Bennett: same charm, same overall popularity, zero effort or initiative. Plus not-insubstantial guitar talent. Rude.

Dick Simon annoyed Bennett. Bennett was all effort, all the time. Stupid Dick, on the other hand, could just strum his stupid guitar and dance through life while his stupid living mother cheered him on.

Dick Simon also changed Bennett’s life. After graduation, Bennett had given up on the world of writing and letters, taking a more practical job as a stockbroker. He was happy enough—enough, that is, until the day he ran into Dick Simon.

Dick had news: he and another mutual acquaintance from Columbia, Max Schuster, were starting a publishing company!

In an instant, Bennett was overwhelmed by rage. Dick Simon?? That slacker idiot??? Who for all Bennett knew was illiterate????? Was starting a publishing company?????? BENNETT was the writer. BENNETT was the star. BENNETT deserved to be the one starting a publishing company.

Bennett voiced all of this disbelief and displeasure right there and then. (Cringe.) In response, Dick Simon, a man Bennett later described as “one of the most self-centered men who ever lived,” offered to help him break into publishing by recommending him for his old job. What an asshole!

*

Once upon a time, a young man named Bennett Cerf was the vice president of Boni & Liveright—the same job Dick Simon had once held, albeit with a better and more important-sounding title. Boni had long since departed the company; only Horace Liveright remained.

Liveright, whose company is now a subsidiary of W.W. Norton, was the single most chaotic person ever to lead a publishing company, and that’s saying a lot. He ran his office like Jay Gatsby’s pool deck. It was prohibition time, but his lobby was forever teeming with bootleggers.

Horace Liveright never shook hands with a woman when shaking genitals would do. He was—ick—one of the only book publishers in town with an honest-to-god “casting couch” prepared for whenever a comely young authoress showed up with a manuscript and a dream.

Horace Liveright wasn’t just a terrible sexist—he was terrible, TERRIBLE, with money. He had eight employees, all of whose primary job was to save Horace Liveright from himself. When he asked for money, for example, they’d say “sorry, we’re all out of cash.” This was a lie, but if they told him the truth, they knew that in a cosmic zeptosecond, the company’s money would be out the door and doing the Charleston somewhere inappropriate.

Of those eight employees, Bennett Cerf was the newest and most senior. To become the vice president of Liveright, he’d only had to fork over gobs and gobs of money to enable Horace Liveright’s lifestyle. He’d invested $25,000 of his inheritance the moment he came on board, followed by another $25,000 a little while later after Horace had pissed away the whole of tranch one.

Not all parents would be pleased with their child taking a “job” that involved them paying $50,000 to an erratic, paunchy, alcoholic roué. Then again, not all parents were Gustave Cerf, who told Bennett that all in all, $50,000 — more than $1 million in today dollars!!—was a reasonable price for a masterclass in publishing leadership.

Classic Gustave. Jesus, Gustave.

But would you believe Gustave was correct?

*

Once upon a time, there was a company called Boni and Liveright. The jewel in their crown, the most valuable asset they had, was a collection called the Modern Library—a stable of classic books, classily packaged and affordably priced.

Horace, as was his wont, bumbled the publication and marketing of this collection worse than a first grader at field day holding a greased watermelon. Still—still—the Modern Library was profitable. It thrived despite the odds, like that unkillable pothos plant in your neglectful coworker’s cubicle.

Eventually, Horace burned through the last of his Daddy Cerf cash once again, and he asked for more. I’ve got a better idea, said Bennett, who was ready for him this time. What if I just bought the Modern Library from you instead?

OK! said Horace. You can have it…for $200,000.

This was a ton of money in those days. Still, it was a terrible business move for Horace. Terrible. His other handlers at Liveright begged and begged him not to sell. They literally took a meeting to beg him.

I kid you not: just as the handlers, a lawyer and an assistant, thought they were getting somewhere with him, the country’s most famous literary agent showed up in Liveright’s lobby waving what turned out to be a fake pistol, screaming for Horace to come outside and face him like a man. Horace had for some time been porking this guy’s wife. OF COURSE HE HAD.

Life at Boni and Liveright in the 1920s was one of constant triage. The handlers ran out to solve this new, even more emergent problem than Horace selling off the company’s core asset, and when the literary agent threat was neutralized—one of them took him out to drink at a bar—they forgot to return to topic A.

That’s how Bennett Cerf took control of the Modern Library. He didn’t have the whole $200k, by the way, but he did have Donald Klopfer, that equally rich if less attractive best friend he’d cuckolded back in the good old days. Donald Klopfer wanted in, and thus their company was born.

*

Once upon a time, two years after buying Modern Library, Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer were in the chips—spectacularly so. Have you ever seen what happens to an unkillable pothos plant languishing in a cubicle when someone actually begins to take care of it?

Feeling restless, the two of them decided to invest some of their profits in an original adult trade publishing program—just a little one. Modern Library was a nice, comfy stable of backlist titles—yawn. To spice things up, they wanted to bet on a racehorse or two.

The plan was just to publish a few original titles a year—just whatever struck their fancy. It was the 1920s! They where white men! Nobody needed a brand strategy!

Would they publish children’s books? Adult books? Puzzle books? Books for ladies? Books for gentlemen? Books that changed lives? The answer was yes. And no. It was whatever. They agreed they’d just publish whatever random books they wanted. This was not going to be a mission-driven house; it was going to be a….random house.

Yes, I’m afraid that’s where it came from. The backstory really is that lame. I wish I could change that reality for us all, but I can’t.

Anyway. Another one of Bennett Cerf’s eight bajillion friends who went on to become cultural icons was Rockwell Kent, seminal midcentury book designer and printmaker. Hearing the name “Random House” so delighted him that he whipped out some paper and drew up a little logo for his friend.

It was just a simple picture of a house. You know the one I’m talking about; I’m guessing it’s on at least one book within 25 feet or so of you right now as you read this. It was also on the back of a certain rAnDoM experimental novel Random House published seven years later, the one that started them on their way to the financial stratosphere and Bennett Cerf on the path to national celebrity: James Joyce’s Ulysses.

*

Once upon a time, toward the end of his life, Bennett Cerf was a household name: the Ken Jennings of his day, only classier. He was a regular panelist and occasional guest host on “What’s My Line,” the massively popular prime-time game show. (If you care to, you can still watch him there via YouTube, hobnobbing with everyone from Jayne Mansfield to Salvador Dali and Gerald Ford.)

In addition to this, because why not, Bennett Cerf published dozens—dozens—of bestselling joke books, each selling a staggering number of copies: limerick collections, puns, knock-knock jokes, miscellaneous witticisms.

Ever since he’d risen to prominence as the public face of Random House during the Ulysses trials, successfully battling government censorship in the name of a revolutionary novel, Bennett Cerf had been something of a national heartthrob, and boy, did he relish that spotlight. Since he and Klopfer had cashed in their chips in 1965, selling Random House to RCA (the “his master’s voice” people), occupying that spotlight had become his full-time job.

Bennett Cerf was brilliant and bubbly and absolutely desperate to charm the pants off every single person he met. He was forever on a quest to find the warmth and worship that’d vanished from his world the day before his 16th birthday.

Don’t misunderstand me: he was no flake, no lightweight, not the sort of person he would accuse Dick Simon of being. He worked hard; he loved literature. Under Bennett’s leadership, Random House had acquired Knopf, the grandaddy of highbrow 20th century publishing, and published luminaries from William Faulkner to Dr. Seuss. He’d taken the company public—a first in book publishing, swiftly emulated by the competition. In addition to publishing entrepreneur, after all, Cerf was an erstwhile stockbroker, writer, and English major, and he wasn’t about to let the American public forget any of it.

Yes, and: no amount of genius, grind, or ambition will ever quite kill the little child crying out inside all of us. Sometimes death won’t even kill it.

Last year, during the Penguin Random House antitrust trial, during all the corporate testimony, I could hear Bennett Cerf’s ghost whispering: Love me, love me, love me. I’m the best and biggest boy. I’ll dissolve if you don’t love me. Please. Please. I’ll be good. I swear.

The year I was born, 1985, RCA sold Random House to Si Newhouse’s company, Advance Publications. In turn, Advance Publications sold it in 1998 to Bertelsmann, the German holding company that still owns PRH today.

Along the way, Random House and its corporate owners went in on the same acquisitions feeding frenzy all the other big book publishers got into in these decades. RCA bought Ballantine, a popular commercial paperback publisher, and folded that one into the publishing burrito. Advance Publications bought Crown and its subsidiary Harmony; Bertelsmann brought in Bantam Doubleday Dell and its holdings, including the then-defunct, now-resurrected Dial Press. And then, of course, Bertelsmann also bought Penguin.

Many—although not all—of these names are now imprints within the Random House Publishing Group: Random House; Modern Library; Ballantine Bantam Dell; Dial Press; Harmony. Overseeing it all is the group’s new-ish executive, Sanyu Dillon, whose previous position was as PRH’s US chief marketing officer.

Dillon is the perfect choice for the Random House Publishing Group as it exists today, since if there’s anything that unites its disparate imprints other than its leadership, it’s popular appeal—in other words, marketing. On the whole, RHPG’s imprints take the big and serious and heavy things—the pain of life—and make it all a little more…sparkly. Accessible. Delicious. Witty. Eloquent. Bearable.

Love me. Love me. Please don’t go. I can do it all. I can be enough for you.

Not even death can silence some ghosts.