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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

that was so terrible I've never forgotten it. Boyd had a long, straggly beard, and this fellow said, “Boyd, you look like an arm pit.” It may have been Dreiser. It sounds like him.

One day the unmistakeable scent of Mr. Lewis drifted into our little office on 45th Street. There was a front elevator and stairway, and in the back we had all our stock--in the back room--and there ran another stairway. I told you Donald and I shared the same office. Without a word, Donald and I took one whiff and the two of us fled down the backstairs-- eight flights of stairs. I can still remember us running away. We left the premises to him. The two of us went cluttering down those stairs screaming with laughter. That's what the Modern Library was like in those days, when the two of us would run away from an anthologist coming in because he smelled so terribly.

Q:

That's a good story.

Cerf:

Oh, we had fun. We were enjoying life to the hilt, and Beatrice Kaufman was still introducing me to glamor and I was still meeting the people that Liveright was meeting through the theater. I don't know whether I told you that he had his theatrical office cut through to the next building.

Q:

Yes, you did.

Cerf:

So soon besides bootleggers and authors, we had actors and actresses out there--those pretty little actresses. Did





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