Dear Donald, Dear Bennett: The Wartime Correspondence of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer

Our ration of liquor on the Base is one fifth of scotch for every five officers per month, so there’s no chance of any dissipation from that angle. There are no towns near us worthy of the name and London is 3½ hours away so there’s no chance of getting into trouble with any gals. I’m sick to death of this non social existence but I see no change except a few days in London later in the month. And those I’ll take because I’m getting stale—I’d like to see Plummer and Hamilton, hear some talk other than airplanes and see if there’s any civilization left in this here world.

The Russians are evidently doing a superb job. I hope to hell they romp thru’ to the Channel. We’ll probably be getting set for invasion when they hit the German border! There’s been big shake up in command around here but that doesn’t extend down as low as a Group. All we have to do is get the planes in the air and have them flown over the target!

All of which is very boring to you, I’m sure. I’m well and happy and lonesome as hell, but you can’t complain about that when you’re not risking your neck. Give my love to Thrup, and Saxe, and, of course, Bob and Merle, and Pauline, Lew & the gang. I can’t write each one letters because I haven’t the time or energy. Keep well, and I hope I’m back in my seat at 20 East damned soon. I do miss it.

1. Phyllis and Christopher are wonderful. Phyllis is now the official chairman of her department at 99 Park, and has been written up in several newspapers. When that dame gets under way, I pity anybody who blocks her path. Talk about juggernauts. Your first wife was an amateur compared with my Phyllis! As for Christopher, he knows his whole alphabet and is rapidly reaching the “why Daddy?” stage. My patience, it will surprise you to know, is not limitless and I am afraid that I am not exactly the best father in the world. I am really crazy about the runt.

2. I doubt that we will have another baby. Phyllis got more of a scare about the Caesarian than I suspected at the time. I guess we’ll have to wait for another Harriman weekend! (Meanwhile, Edith Young is four months on the way.)

3. Everybody around here is as happy as can be expected. Saxe, Lew, Phyllis and I are shoving off Thursday for a couple of weeks of sunshine in Miami. I understand conditions down there are incredible, but they can’t take the sun and the beach away from us. That is all we want. I originally dictated this paragraph to Jez to read that the question whether Bob Linscott came with us or not was still in abeyance. Well, it isn’t in abeyance any longer. Bob just called up from Boston to say he is definitely coming with us, and I am happier about this than I can say. I hope you will agree with me that his acquisition is a tenstrike for Random House—not so much right now when we are restricted by lack of paper, etc., but for post-war expansion when we’ll really have an editorial board, in my opinion, that is better than anyone else’s in America. Bob will be particularly valuable in the business of entertaining authors, agents and editors. Women fall for him like a ton of bricks. I had him for dinner about ten days ago and the next morning Beatrice Kaufman and Peg Pulitzer called up separately to ask for his telephone number. And a certain young lady, who shall be nameless but who was once married to you, exclaimed upon hearing the news, “Goody, goody, now I can really walk out.” I went to some pains to explain to all of these worthy creatures that we were not getting Linscott down to take care of them! Saxe is delighted about the news and the only one who has any reservations whatever is Harry Maule. I anticipate a wee bit of trouble in that direction insofar as agents are concerned, but Bob is such a tactful fellow that I am sure everything will be ironed out in due course. The salary arrangement is a straight $200.00 a week with a small percentage to be agreed upon later on books that he is directly responsible for. Sooner or later we are going to have to give some of our key people a small stock participation in the business. That sort of thing is in the wind now and I think we owe it to some of the fellows around the office. If you have time, I’d like your views on this subject. Nothing, of course, will be done until you get back, but we ought to be thinking about it now.

4. Your fourth question, in case you may have forgotten it, reads “Is Pauline more beautiful than ever?” By Pauline I presume you mean Jezebel. If this is true, why the hell don’t you say so? Jezebel is definitely more beautiful than ever and has now reached the super-dreadnought or Madeleine Boyd class. A nearsighted gentleman mistook her yesterday for Alice B. Toklas.…

5. Red Lewis is definitely planning another novel. He says he’s got the title for it already but won’t tell us what it is. He also says he thinks it will be his most popular subject since ARROWSMITH. He expects to start work on it in about two months. We may have it for publication in the Fall of 1945. He is in very good shape.

6. Quent Reynolds’ THE CURTAIN RISES looks like a runaway. The first edition of 26,000 copies is already sold out and 10,000 more are on press. The official publication date is March 6th. This book, like all the others on our list, are going forth to you regularly and I only hope that a few of them will actually reach you. I am also sending two more Spring catalogues to you in separate envelopes. Let me know if they arrive.

7. Walter Clark’s manuscript ran to some 1200 pages and needed cutting. He stayed at my house for three days last week and he and Saxe had some long sessions which I think will produce the necessary results. The book has some wonderful stuff in it but, frankly, I don’t think it’s as good as OX BOW. The best novels on our list this year are LIMIT OF DARKNESS by Howard Hunt and a book by Samuel Hopkins Adams called CANAL TOWN, which has really got the old zing in it. Then we’ve got Dick Tregaskis’ INVASION DIARY coming up. It will be a big season for us. Bob Haas will investigate Robert Boothby’s THE NEW ECONOMY immediately and will write you about it as soon as he has some details.

Your letter of Feb. 11 arrived to-day. I have already received and answered one written subsequent to that date. So you see how irregular the mail service really is.

1. Modern Library sales are growing so fast that I don’t feel that the restoration of peacetime conditions can do more than temporarily interrupt the trend. The hundreds of thousands of Modern Library books that have been distributed through Army and Navy channels have introduced the series to God knows how many millions of new readers. If only one half of one percent of these boys retain an interest in books in general and the Modern Library in particular, our potential market will have multiplied about five times over pre-war standards. This isn’t just dreaming; it is hard, cold facts. We are taking advantage of present circumstances to make new plates for dozens of old titles, to replace bad translations with good new ones and, in general, to get the line in such shape that the minute paper restrictions and labor difficulties are things of the past we’ll be in a position to go ahead with all stops pulled.

2. The reception of the Illustrated Modern Library books is nothing less than ecstatic. We are getting the art work and plates done on ten more titles at this very moment. We may not be able to print them until the war is over, but when we do get them out, we’ll have a substantial nucleus for a new line with infinite possibilities.

3. The Lifetime Library has been receiving an increasing amount of our attention and Linscott’s coming will intensify our drive in that direction. The Aquinas, as you know, is almost ready. Advance interest in it is enormous. We’ve almost finished setting the Wheatley Pepys in a two-volume set identical with the Plato. A one volume of St. Augustine is under way. Last night I got what I think is another thoroughly sound idea for the series, and that is a complete and unexpurgated Burton’s ARABIAN NIGHTS. This has never been available in anything but an expensive ten or eleven volume set. I think we can boil it down into our two standard volumes and, if that fails, certainly into three. We will get the plates all made and have another item ready for post-war promotion that will bring an income, I feel sure, for the rest of our natural lives.

4. The flat juvenile market has only been tapped. Lew Miller has done a wonderful job of lining up toy accounts, many of whom have vowed to keep on with the line after the war is over. There is no reason on earth why they shouldn’t. The flat juveniles alone should support us in our old age—unless, of course, you feel you have to give Jezebel a new ermine coat every year.

5. To add to our flat juveniles, we’ve got plans afoot for a new 25¢ line which may work wonders. The notion is to translate Harper’s phenomenally successful Tall Mother Goose into the 25¢ line. We are trying to work out a list of ten titles and are wavering between the name of Lofties and Tip Toe Books. This is all very hush hush and we are trying to guard the secret most zealously. If Duplaix ever dares to holler that we swiped an idea of his, we have only to remind him that when we complained about his duplicating our 50¢ and $1.00 titles in his 25¢ Golden Books, he said very vehemently that different priced lines in no way could possibly compete with one another. I really don’t think there will be the slightest trouble along this line. Judging by the way the $1.00 Tall Mother Goose has sold, this format at a quarter could really be a gold mine.

6. To the already formidable stable of first-class writers that are now under contract to Random House, we can expect an addition of still more through the coming of Bob Linscott. We made it very clear to him that we don’t want him to take any authors from the Houghton Mifflin list, but inevitably a couple of them will come with him. Carson McCullers, for instance, has already sworn that she will give a book to nobody but Bob. Furthermore, as you know, he has ins with people like Bernice Baumgarten that none of us could get in twenty years. This is all future stuff, of course, because we haven’t got paper to take on any new people now—but it’s the future years that we are talking about!

7. All kinds of new avenues of distribution for books are pending. Independent news dealers throughout the country have had such phenomenal success with Pocket Books that they are dying to get into higher price brackets. We’ve already made a few contacts that may prove invaluable later on.

8. We have just signed all the necessary papers for the launching of Random House of Canada. It is my hunch that this new setup will multiply the business that Macmillan was able to do for us up there ten times over.

The graft on subsidiary rights grows more and more staggering all the time. The Literary Guild is using THE CURTAIN RISES as one of four current bonus books. Their first print order is 100,000 copies! That means $6000.00 for our share without turning a hair. Milo Sutliff [at Doubleday] is certainly riding high these days. All of his clubs and promotions are coining money, and I daresay he had more than a little to do with the sudden resignation of Malcolm Johnson from the Doubleday outfit last week. That news came as a bombshell to the publishing world. Harry Maule’s face was a study when he heard it. Nobody knows what Malcolm’s future plans are going to be.

Linscott has already made himself a permanent part of the outfit here. He is busy lining up young authors for post-war operation, a task for which I believe he is better fitted than anybody else in the whole publishing business. I have also got him and Saxe tearing their hair out over a new American dictionary for Random House. We want to be sure we’ve got the right setup for this project and then, by God, we are going ahead with it come hell or high water.

In short, my dear Major, current books are taken care of and, as you can see from the above, we are now all devoting ourselves principally to the dream that we share with you: a firm, solid backlist that will support us, I hope, for the rest of our lives.

I was down in London this week for a meeting and had my couple of days and nights with the “doodle bug.”* It’s a trim little ship and the most important thing about it is that it makes a helluva racket and you can hear it for quite a ways. Then there’s a couple of second’s silence and a big bang. Either you’re all right or you aint—and that’s that. But between the invasion and the doodle bugs London is now nice and empty—I stopped at the Savoy without reservations—they almost seemed glad to see me!

The Russians say they will win the war in 90 days no matter what we do—the best opinion around here is about four months, so I guess we’ll be packing to go to China in the fall. I’m getting mighty optimistic but it seems to me that the war is actually in its final phase and things are going extraordinarily well!

The pace has slackened a bit around here—we’re back to some strategic bombing rather than tactical—and I’m getting fed up. You’d better train down to get in at 10 o’clock because I don’t intend to do any work for a long time after I return. I’ll be no asset to Random House.

As for my return home—the over 38 deal is suspended over here for the present—but Jones knows that I want to go home after this is over—I’ve been turning down jobs right and left with that in mind. How long it will take me to get out of this and how many of us they’ll let go is anybody’s guess. Just tell me when the European war will be over and I’ll make a guess.…

I flew down to Fighter Command yesterday to see Lynn. He has written a short history of the command which he wants me to read. He’s applied to go home as the Fighter Command is being disbanded—he probably will get it in spite of this stoppage. I can’t make up my mind whether the German opposition is holding us up on the western front or whether it’s supplies that are doing it. Anyway the news is confusing but I think pretty good. We’re still busy as beavers around here. The weather is our worst enemy.

Of course the big news over here is von Rundstedt’s drive.* He obviously caught our boys with their pants down and, altho’ he’s slowed down a bit to-day, he’s by no means stopped. It was well done weatherwise—we’ve been grounded all week, chafing at the bit and fogged in so that even the birds are down. Tomorrow the weather will break and we should be of some help. To-day we managed to struggle over and back but weren’t too effective. Maybe the fighters did some good! Anyway, the next few weeks should tell how long the damned thing will last. I hope it’s their last flying and they lose every damned German involved!

It looks as if we’ll be really working Christmas day—I’ll bet you’re having a fine tree for Chris! Give my love to Thrup and the youngster—and to all the people at the office, the two Bobs, Pauline, Saxe, Harry and all!

* The movie star was a squadron commander in the 445th.

* Louise Bonnino, RH juvenile editor.

* Bennett’s father worked for a time at RH in charge of stock. Books were sometimes printed but not all bound until needed.

* The German V-2 Buzz Bomb.

* Pat Knopf, Alfred’s son, unexpectedly witnessed Donald’s excitement. Pat was the pilot of a B-24 bomber, and once had to make an emergency landing at an unfamiliar airfield with an engine out and a wounded tail gunner. As he climbed out of the plane he saw an officer peddling towards him on a bicycle. It was Donald. Both were surprised to see one another. After greetings were hollered, Donald asked Pat if he knew what just happened. Puzzled, Pat said he didn’t. “We just bought Grosset!” Donald announced.

* Bennett often used a character named Farmer Klopfer.

* The Battle of the Bulge.