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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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his being there anyway so quickly, and when he started talking the football team in particular thought, “My God, what are we in for!" But this turned out to be one of the happiest things that happened to me in my life, because Raymond Weaver's course in comparative literature was something. Inside of three weeks this man had the football team reading Dante, Cervantes, and discussing Boswell, discussing them in class with deep interest, because he was a persuasive teacher and a wonderfully nice man.

By this time I was not only editing Jester but doing this column in Spectator. And there were about 30 people in this class. I decided I was going to make Weaver one of the most popular figures at Columbia. I started writing stories about him in Spectator, which enraged him. There was a baseball player at that time on the Chicago White Sox called Buck Weaver, who was a wonderful player except he became one of the Black Sox later on. You know, the great baseball scandal: he was one of the fellows who was black-balled because he was in on the take. But at this time he was still a great hero, and of course Raymond Weaver I named “Buck” Weaver, because that was the name of the player. The dignified Mr. Weaver was not amused.

Q:

He probably thought he was above baseball.

Cerf:

No, just being called “Buck.” And then I made up from whole cloth a story about him booked for a party but unable





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