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to say that the minute one of his underlings is worth more than $17,500--I don't know where he got that figure from--he's ready for him to go somewhere else to get bigger. He'll hire other kids and let them work themselves up to $17,500 and in turn go off somewhere else. So I understand that he was not too unhappy when these three people left because they were all becoming very high priced people.

Well, for Knopf this was manna from heaven. A lot of other people were after them, but we made an offer that was so attractive they couldn't turn it down. They are coming into Knopf's on March 1, next month; and they're going to be sort of a separate unit for a while. But if you know Bob Gottleib, he ain't going to be no separate unit! Bob Gottleib is a very strong, attractive publisher and knows his business; and Tony Schulte is a fine administrator. Nina, of course... there's nobody like her in the advertising business. So to get even one of them would have been a coup, I think. To get the three of them is a miracle. I'm very happy because this assures the Knopf succession.

With Bernstein and the editors that we have at Random House now, plus possibly my two sons... Chris is coming along fine; Jonathan gets out of Harvard this year. If RCA keeps its hands off, Random House looks great to me. If they don't, God knows what will happen. By that time, I will have gone to meet my maker. What's going to happen to the world is just as big a question mark as what's going to happen to Random House. How can you predict what's going to happen even five years hence in a world like ours?