Chris reviews Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built.
Gayle Feldman, Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built (Random House, 2026).
This magnificent book is a massive tome (982 pages of text and notes) that doesn’t read like one.
The writing is brisk and lively. Feldman is a master storyteller, and she has produced an insightful biography of Bennett Cerf that details his fascinating life and provides an in-depth examination of the American publishing industry in the twentieth century.
She pays particular attention to how American Jews transformed the nation’s book culture through the establishment of major publishing houses such as Random House, Liveright, Knopf, and Simon and Schuster. Attuned to the larger context, Feldman also shows readers how New York City’s history played a role in the process, and how Hollywood and television emerged in what she calls “strong supporting roles” in Cerf’s story.
Marshalling an impressive array of interviews, archival research, and immersion in newspapers and magazines, Feldman paints a portrait of a man driven by a desire to be consequential. Yet his quest for fame became a double-edged sword. Publishing a book of jokes that bore the wholly appropriate title of Try and Stop Me, Cerf achieved commercial success but forever diminished himself in the eyes of critics as someone who shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
The Bennett Cerf that emerges in Feldman’s pages is charming, mostly likeable, full of faults (excessive vanity and sycophantic in his friendship with Frank Sinatra, to name but two), and consequential. I couldn’t help but think of the television series Mad Men as I made my way through the book. Indeed, Cerf’s virtually automatic flirtatiousness in his dealings with women, including those who worked at Random House, sometimes extended beyond that. The sensibilities of 1956 were clearly not those of 2026.
This book is a tremendous accomplishment. I found myself thoroughly enjoying it while I read, and I am grateful to Gayle Feldman for sharing her immense talent.
