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house was getting too big for us and we began to worry about the succession.

What about...here you had two sons?

They're very young.

Yes. But you didn't want to hold on for them?

Oh, I couldn't. Even today--here it is 1968--Chris is only twenty-six and Jon is still up at Harvard. He's twentyone. There's another ten years before they'll be ready. Who knows where this crazy world is heading for? I'm sixty-nine now.

You're a young sixty-nine.

Yes. But I'll probably never live to be eighty. If I do it will be a miracle.

I was worried about this. The boys wouldn't be ready for a long time. We had some good young men in the place, but still this was getting to be a big, big business. So at least we listened. Several people who approached us we didn't even consider.

You didn't think that this was going to change the character of Random House?