Nothing Random

Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built

De: Gayle Feldman

Narrado por: Lisa Flanagan, Gayle Feldman

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • The “exhilarating” (The Boston Globe) story of the legendary Random House founder, whose seemingly charmed life at the apogee of the American Century afforded him a front-row seat to literary and cultural history in the making

“[A] big, beautiful biography . . . There’s a new Power Broker in town.”—The New York Times

“Feldman depicts a lost world, at times a lost paradise, when New York, Hollywood and the literary life were at their most glamorous and privileged.”—The Washington Post

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. But they didn’t know that the handsome, driven, paradoxical young man of the 1920s had vowed to become a great publisher and, a decade later, was. By then, he’d signed Eugene O’Neill, Gertrude Stein, and 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 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 to Broadway, TV, Hollywood, and 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 two hundred individuals, deeply researched archival material, and letters from private collections not previously available, this book brings Bennett Cerf to vibrant life, drawing book lovers into his world, finally laying open the page on a quintessential American original.

Fantastic Book!

There truly is not a dull moment in this book, quite an accomplishment, given its extraordinary length. Nothing Random isn't so much an intimate portrait of Bennett Cerf as it is a history of American publishing in the 20th Century. Feldman gives lively and vivid portraits of most of the major writers of the period, from Joyce, Faulkner, and Gertrude Stein to Dr Seuss and James Michener. It's also a remarkable portrait of New York City in its glittering prime and decline. If you love reading about books and writers, you will LOVE this book, even if the name of its main subject is unfamiliar.

The narrator is pretty good, although at times a little robotic.

Best bio of book publishing of the last 25 years.

Superb book overall in story, pacing and data. Excellent performance by narrator Lisa Flanagan.
This book brings listener right into Random House.

Pronunciation Problems

"Template," "reprising," "arugula" pronounced incorrectly, "idyll" pronounced "idol"--these errors grate on the listener to what is otherwise a well-edited book. Rehearsal before, corrections from a qualified listener during recording, or editing afterward would all solve the problem. This is the second book I've experienced with this issue and must conclude that quality control is not happening for performance, a sad turn of events for a company that used to produce exemplary audio products.

Fascinating glimpse into a very specific time and milieu

Kind of long and possibly over detailed. Too many names to keep track of especially in an audiobook.