Bennett Cerf
Bennett Cerf was an American publisher, writer, editor, journalist, and autobiographer born on May 25, 1898, in Manhattan.
Cerf was educated at Townsend Harris High School before continuing his studies at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He worked across several overlapping roles in the English-language literary world, serving as both a publisher and an editor while also producing writing of his own, including autobiographical work. His career placed him at the intersection of publishing and broader public life in the United States throughout much of the twentieth century.
Cerf received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a distinction that reflects his presence in American popular culture beyond the strictly literary sphere. He died on August 27, 1971, in Mount Kisco. His body of work spans journalism, editing, publishing, and autobiography, with those multiple professional identities characterizing the range of his engagement with written and public communication throughout his life.
Quotes by Bennett Cerf
TV’s sameness has destroyed many things, such as the American urge toward independent thought.
Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire, then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized, anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer -and if so, why?
The fact that we don’t read more books in America can be traced squarely to the fact that we have newspapers that are about a hundred times as big as the newspapers anywhere else.
There is a mass of people, we might as well admit, who if they weren’t watching television, would be doing absolutely nothing else.
I think it’s become fashionable for the snobbish egghead today to make fun of television. I’ve heard many people, boast, “I would never have a television set in my house,” well, these people are fools.
