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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

liked best in my lifetime, not jokes. It's a damned good anthology and so is the Encyclopedia of American Humor. Cass Canfield at Harper's also did my Out on a Limerick, which fared well. I'm under contract now to both of them for books, but I'm getting so lazy that I don't know when I'll do them. The one for Harper's was due this year and I haven't done a word on it yet. It's going to be called Bennet Cerf's Treasury of Atrocious Puns. Imagine a whole book of puns. I think that we'll have to give it with a vomiting cup. Heaven help you if you read more than a few at a time! I've got hundreds of them saved up in my files, but haven't gotten round to assorting them.

I believe that joke books have a certain rhythm. I can't explain it, but I know how to do it. It's like Gershwin was born knowing how to write songs, and other people are born knowing how to write books. I have a certain skill at assembling these books that makes them easy to read. I don't understand what it is myself, but I do know how to do it. My joke books are quite different from other joke books, and there's a very good reason why they sell ten times as many I think. I've always said that I've learned how to exploit a very small talent to the absolute ultimate degree.

Q:

It's a great virtue though, and a lot of people who have many talents don't even begin to use them.





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