Publishing: A Cerfit of Riches

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of exceedingly competent editors. Albert Erskine Jr., 55, was Faulkner's editor, now handles John O'Hara and James Michener. Jason Epstein, 38, is in charge of W. H. Auden and Norman O. Brown. Epstein surveys his duties with cynical modesty. "You're just a valet," he says. "The suit comes in and you adjust the buttons. Any role you play is accidental. You were at the right place at the right time." But most authors consider the editorial function a little more important than that. In a left-handed compliment, Critic Leslie Fiedler once described the typical book editor as "an odd blend of schoolmarm and Jewish mother."

Both Erskine and Epstein, as well as most of the 22-man editorial staff, get complete freedom from Cerf in the choice of titles that Random House buys and in their dealings with authors. Cerf takes charge of important advertising campaigns—he even writes a few ads himself—and usually directs all important financial negotiations for his top authors. "In one month," he said recently, "I sold the paperback rights on three books for $1.7 million—Michen-er's The Source for $700,000, Capote's In Cold Blood for $500,000, and Kathleen Winsor's Wanderers East, Wanderers West for $500,000. Then a month later I sold O'Hara's The Lockwood Concern for another half-million."

Now and then, Cerf is called in to iron things out when editor-writer relations get difficult. He cajoled Jerome Weidman into rewriting a badly tooled draft of his forthcoming book, Other People's Money. Cerf also thought up the title for the book, as he did for Mac Hyman's No Time for Sergeants, William Brinkley's Don't Go Near the Wa ter, and Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate.

A Lot of Love. When he is not playing adman, businessman, referee and editor, Cerf devotes a good part of his time to keeping his authors happy. Fortunately, he enjoys it, even when his high-strung writers curl into knots. He likes to tell about the time that Sinclair Lewis spent a night at the Cerf apartment. "He had dinner," Cerf recalls, "and we were all sitting at the table. Then Bill Faulkner called up and said he was in town. I told Lewis and asked him, could Bill come over? Lewis said, 'Certainly not. This is my night!' Then at 9:30, Lewis went to bed. At 10:30, he shouted downstairs, 'Bennett!' I answered him, and he said, 'I just wanted to see if you sneaked out to see Faulkner.' '

Today, Cerf puts much effort into the care and feeding of his favorite author, John O'Hara. Whenever O'Hara telephones him from his Princeton, N.J., home and says, "Hello, Cerfie," Bennett knows that he has some kind of complaint. Often O'Hara calls only to ask Cerf to get him a hotel room. Cerf always complies, and also makes certain that the Random House parking lot will save a spot for O'Hara's Rolls-Royce. O'Hara is equally fond of Cerf. "He just needs a lot of love," says he. Besides, "85% of the time he knows how to handle me, and 85% of the time I know how to handle him too. He knows I'm in the stock market, and every once in a while he calls me and says. 'You see that goddam market today?' " Most important, adds O'Hara, "he knows that when I put something down on paper, it's right.