Gayle Feldman

News updates and media appearances.

• June 10, 2026: The Annual Rosenbach Bloomsday Virtual Talk: On Liberating Ulysses

  Gayle spoke with Robert Spoo on the role Bennett Cerf played in bringing Joyce's masterpiece to American readers.

  Gayle Feldman's new biography and cultural history, Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built, includes a long chapter on the role Bennett Cerf, the cofounder of Random House, played in liberating James Joyce's Ulysses and establishing it as part of the literary canon. The fight to publish the novel legally in America is a quintessential New York story. Ninety-three years ago, on December 6, 1933, in a Manhattan courtroom, Judge John Munro Woolsey issued the landmark decision. Mounting and winning the court case put Random House, a young upstart of a company, on the map. Cerf, his business partner, the two lawyers who fought the case, a sympathetic prosecutor, and the essential, behind-the-scenes go-betweens who helped bring Cerf and Joyce together, were all New Yorkers. Feldman will relate how, through hard work, inspired archival detective work, sheer luck, and knowing the proclivities of her subject, she was able to uncover new information on the role the go-betweens played in putting Joyce's Ulysses into the hands of the right publisher at the right time, who was then able to put it into the hands of waiting readers.
• June 10, 2026: New Yorker "Best Books of 2026 So Far"

  Nothing Random has been selected by The New Yorker for its "Best Books of 2026 So Far" list, writing:

  Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of the publishing giant Random House, may now be virtually unknown, but he was a major celebrity in postwar America. In this sweeping biography, Feldman reveals Cerf to be a paradoxical man: often described as superficial and unserious, renowned for writing joke books and for his tenure on the popular game show "What's My Line?," Cerf also published profound literary works by talents such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Eugene O'Neill—and, in doing so, transformed Random House into both a profitable business and a cultural force. Although Cerf chased fame and avoided plumbing "the depths" of his life, as Feldman writes, he could "appreciate, at times to the point of awe, depth in others."

• June 7, 2026: Book TV Appearance

  Gayle appeared on C-SPAN's Book TV for a Q&A about Nothing Random
• June 4, 2026: Video from Warwick's Booksellers in La Jolla, CA

  With gratitude...
• May 8, 2026: Interview on "Café Terrance" podcast

  Gayle spoke with "American in Paris" Terrance Gelenter about Nothing Random.

  Terrance - Your American Friend in Paris · Cafe Terrance – Episode 72 - Gayle Feldman
• April 27, 2026: Nothing Random "Briefly Noted" in The New Yorker

  Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of the publishing giant Random House, may now be virtually unknown, but he was a major celebrity in postwar America. In this sweeping biography, Feldman reveals Cerf to be a paradoxical man: often described as superficial and unserious, renowned for writing joke books and for his tenure on the popular game show "What's My Line?," Cerf also published profound literary works by talents such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Eugene O'Neill—and, in doing so, transformed Random House into both a profitable business and a cultural force. Although Cerf chased fame and avoided plumbing "the depths" of his life, as Feldman writes, he could "appreciate, at times to the point of awe, depth in others."

• April 24, 2026: Biographers International Podcast

  Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built is the latest book by veteran journalist and author Gayle Feldman. Published by Random House in January 2026, this biography explores the life of a driven young man who vowed to become a great publisher — and did. Fellow biographer and BIO member Lisa Napoli interviewed Gayle Feldman.
• April 4, 2026: Review of Nothing Random in New York Sun

  The New York Sun has published a glowing review of Nothing Random. Carl Rollyson writes:

  "Gayle Feldman has produced a magisterial account of one of the great American publishers and the industry he built up... she has provided extraordinary insights into the business of publishing and what it takes to produce significant books that might not sell well to begin with but that, in the long run, accrue in a publisher's profits and prestige. Ms. Feldman has done the hard, diligent work in archives, a labor in this case that took decades, and included hundreds of interviews and, as I know firsthand, just as many or more casual, informal conversations with authors and others in the book business to produce her authoritative and compelling biography. The result is a portrayal not only of a singular individual but of an industry and period of time in the history of publishing... So much detail threatens to congest many biographies, however worthy, but Ms. Feldman has employed her facts and perceptions in a lively narrative that never flags. Above all, I have to admire her persistence to get the story right. She has done justice not just to Cerf but to all of those figures who contributed to the success of a great publishing house."

  Read online at NYSun.com

• March 18, 2026: Video from Silurians Press Club event with Kai Bird
• March 7, 2026: Instagram video from Square Books in Oxford, MS, praising Nothing Random

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• March 3, 2026: Video from CUNY Graduate Center Biography Seminar in New York
• February 12, 2026: Video from Barnes & Noble event in New York

  With gratitude to the bookseller at Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue, New York!
• Jan 30, 2026: Wall Street Journal reviews Nothing Random: "He Was His Own Bestseller"

  Timothy Farrington writes:

  "Bennett Cerf's Random House went from scrappy startup to publishing giant. Along the way, Cerf became a celebrity."

  "Cerf...made his persona inseparable from his company....[He] was fun and charismatic, a jokester and bon vivant. He loved glitz and loved to belong.... Cerf burnished his own fame with chatty magazine columns about the literary world...as well as with a string of joke books.... For all that, he had good taste, or at least an instinct for what would last.... Then in 1966, an aging Cerf sold the firm to the conglomerate RCA, parent of NBC. Ms. Feldman's account...is gripping."

  Read online at WSJ.com

• Jan 20, 2026: Jewish Book Council reviews Nothing Random

  Stephen Whitfield has penned a lovely review of Nothing Random, writing:

  "[P]acked with daz­zling­ly described episodes and engross­ing por­traits, based on research for which the adjec­tive ​’exhaus­tive’ could have been coined (though it bare­ly seems ade­quate). Her nar­ra­tive gifts make mid-Man­hat­tan pub­lish­ing down­right excit­ing. Feld­man inter­prets Cerf's career as sin­gu­lar."

  Read online at JewishBookCouncil.org

• Jan 18, 2026: New York Times reviews Nothing Random

  Alexandra Jacobs has penned a lovely review of Nothing Random for The New York Times: "He Put Dr. Seuss, Ayn Rand and 'Ulysses' on Your Bookshelves"

  "Swing open the saloon doors: There's a new 'Power Broker' in town. For surely the story of the publishing behemoth Random House, told through its charismatic co-founder Bennett Cerf, is as worthy of crossing the thousand-page mark as the story of how Robert Moses bulldozed New York. Books are just as much part of the city’s infrastructure as highways and housing developments.

  "And this one, 'Nothing Random,' by the veteran Publishers Weekly reporter Gayle Feldman, is as delightful as it is hefty."

  Read online at NYTimes.com

• Jan 12, 2026: "Truman Capote, Bennett Cerf, and the Making of In Cold Blood," an excerpt from Nothing Random

  Lit Hub has published an excerpt from Nothing Random, focused on how Random House brought Capote's magnum opus to bookshelves across america.

  Read online at Lit Hub

• Jan 11, 2026: Gayle interviewed for "Keen on America"

  Andrew Keen sat with Gayle for a conversation about Nothing Random and the history it documents:

  The Man Who Made Books Random by Andrew Keen

  Episode 2769: Gayle Feldman on how Bennett Cerf Built Random House

  

  View on Substack

• Jan 9, 2026: Washington Post review of Nothing Random

  The Washington Post has published a glowing review of Nothing Random. Michael Dirda writes:

  "Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built isn't just a biography. In its pages, Gayle Feldman depicts a lost world, at times a lost paradise, when New York, Hollywood and the literary life were at their most glamorous and privileged. It's quite a story... Through years of research, careful fact-checking...and an insider's insight, coupled with cool evenhandedness, Feldman brings to life not only a pivotal figure in publishing but also the era he was so much a part of. To do this, Nothing Random mixes anecdotes about writers behaving badly, analyses of corporate wheeling and dealing, and scenes of hedonistic excess. It's unquestionably a work of biographical reclamation but also a whole lot of fun — which is just what Cerf would have wanted."

  Read the full review

• Jan 8, 2026: Boston Globe review of Nothing Random

  The Boston Globe has reviewed Nothing Random in a combined review with Gerald Howard's The Insider. Wendy Smith calls it an "astute portrait...instructive...intelligent, exhilirating."

  Read the full review

• Dec 30, 2025: New York Times includes Nothing Random in books for January 2026

  NYT has published their recommended reading list for January 2026, writing of Nothing Random:

  Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House who published everyone from Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner to Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Dr. Seuss, was as legendary a wit and bon vivant as he was a literary figure. Feldman's comprehensive biography paints a vivid portrait of the man, 20th-century New York and the golden age of American publishing.

  Read the full article

• Dec 16, 2025: An Excerpt from Nothing Random in Publishers Weekly

  Publishers Weekly is running an excerpt from Nothing Random, available on their website, "Patriotism and Profit at Random House During World War II."

  Read the full excerpt online
• Nov 14, 2025: A Q&A with Gayle Feldman, Publishers Weekly

  Henry Carrigan talked with author Gayle Feldman about the research and writing of Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built.

  What drew you to Bennett Cerf?

  I discovered that there was this huge Random House archive and the Cerf archive at Columbia University. I remembered Cerf from when I was a kid and watched him on TV, on the show What's My Line? I thought you could tell the story of 20th-century publishing through Cerf's life. I did a proposal and sent it to Bob Loomis at Random House, whom Cerf had hired, and asked if he could tell me if I was on the right track. A couple of days later, he phoned me and told me he had sent my proposal to one of Bennett's sons, Christopher Cerf, who liked it. But I had no idea what I had taken on: I signed the contract in the autumn of 2002, 23 years ago.

  Read the full article online