Channel Cerfing Rounded by His Books, Michael Frith Keyboards, Files, ’63 Co-Wrote with Sound, Image, and Word, Chris Cerf Teaches the Basics
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Montage Art, books, diverse creations 15 Fakery and Shakespeare 16 A Baton with Sting 18 Open Book 20 Devoted to Debt 21 Off the Shelf 22 Chapter and Verse how I got the job…,” he mar- vels), working with authors ranging from Abbie Hoffman to Theodor Seuss Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”). He was also involved with the publisher’s Beginner Books imprint (started by Seuss and his wife, Helen, along with Phyllis Cerf), which published easier-to- read Seuss titles. Then he branched out, ap- plying his facility at writing parodies (honed as an under- graduate on the staff of the Christopher Cerf in Harvard Lampoon, his home office in where he and Manhattan, sur- Channel Cerfing rounded by his books, Michael Frith keyboards, files, ’63 co-wrote With sound, image, and word, Chris Cerf teaches the basics. screens, and stuffed the James Bond animals by craig lambert parody book Alligator) at the National Lampoon, which Cerf joined in 1970 as a contributing editor hristopher cerf ’63 had author, columnist, and TV panelist on from its first issue (see “Funniest Pages,” laughter in his blood even be- What’s My Line? November-December 2010, page 27). That fore he was born: New Yorker Like his father, the jovial Cerf is a creator same year, he signed on with a fledgling Cfounder Harold Ross intro- in several media. “I’ve found that the most children’s television program, Sesame duced his parents and comically bran- interesting way to go, too,” he says. “To Street—his Beginner Books experience dished a shotgun at their wedding. build on what you learn in one place and came in handy—and to date has composed Those parents would be Phyllis Fraser, use it somewhere else.” His professional more than 200 songs for it. “If you write a onetime Hollywood actress and lat- career also began in his father’s footsteps. four or five songs a year and the show lasts er book editor, and Bennett Cerf, co- For eight years after college, Cerf was an 40 years, you have a huge body of work!” founder of Random House publishers, editor at Random House (“Don’t know he explains. That body of work has earned Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer Harvard Magazine 13 MONTAGE “He had the voice down to a T,” Cerf says. “We wrote the paper just like the New York Times, only more so. The Times’s own writers were all available—they were out on strike! Nora Ephron was involved, and Frances FitzGerald [’62] did a book re- view. Nobody slept for four weeks; it was one of the highlights of my profession- al life. Our big terror was that the strike would end and the real Times would start publishing again before we went to press. Luckily it didn’t, and we sold millions of them.” In recent years Cerf has been rolling out his own educational programs under the auspices of Sirius Thinking Ltd., the media company he launched with three partners, including Michael Frith, in 1995. Between the Lions, co-produced with WGBH-TV in Boston, a children’s literacy initiative that Above: A younger Cerf with includes a daily television show, a website, Muppeteer Jim Henson (right) and and print and multimedia components, Muppet Ernie. Left: Cerf and col- premiered on PBS in 2000. It stars a pair league Norman Stiles flank dog star of lions who live in and run an enchanted Lomax as Cerf holds Delta the cat. Below: Cerf today with characters library. Cerf co-produces and writes songs from Between the Lions for the show, which has won six Emmys. “Sesame Street targets preschoolers, three- to Lampoons,” he explains. (He and five-year-olds, and early fives,” Cerf says. National Lampoon co-founder Hen- “Lions’ sweet spot is pre-kindergarten to ry Beard ’67 have collaborated on first grade: four- to seven-year-olds.” several humorous books, includ- Lomax: The Hound of Music, another Sir- ing The Experts Speak.) His versa- ius project, launched in 2008. It follows tility embraces a 1987 collabora- Lomax, a good-natured dog hooked on tion with actress/producer Marlo melodies, around the country with his him three Grammys and eight Emmys, for Thomas on Free to Be…A Family (the book/ human and feline compan- both songwriting and producing. record/TV special sequel to Free to Be…You ions, Amy Cerf’s songs include parodies of pop and Me) and Not the New York hits, including Beatles classics like “Let Times, a parody of the Grey It Be” (“Letter B”) and “Hey Jude” (“Hey Lady published during the Food,” sung by the Cookie Monster). As 1978 strike that closed down “Bruce Stringbean,” Cerf belted out a the newspaper. Co-conspir- send-up of The Boss’s “Born in the U.S.A.” ators on the latter, among that featured various farm animals mak- his “most enjoyable adven- ing sundry sounds while getting along tures,” included George Plimp- famously, a lesson in diversity called “Barn ton ’48, editor/writer Rusty CERF OF CHRISTOPHER COURTESY PHOTOGRAPHS in the USA.” Sesame Street puppet-meister Unger, and writer/sati- Jim Henson even created a stuffed char- rist Tony Hendra. acter based on Cerf: the piano-banging The group dis- lead singer of “Little Chrissy and the covered that the Alphabeats.” (Cerf’s rock-piano style, Toledo Blade used which owes much to Jerry Lee Lewis, is the same type- energetic enough to fracture a keyboard faces as the Times occasionally.) and was willing For some years Cerf headed Sesame to print the parody, Street’s “non-broadcast division,” which and the Washing ton spun off educational products like books Post’s Carl Bern- and records from the show. “Sesame uses stein agreed to all the media, just like we did on both write the lead story. 14 July - August 2011 MONTAGE and Delta, as they scout out folk songs you can do, so we just had to use it,” Cerf people like two-time Grammy-winning and teach viewers about musicality and notes. He and his Sirius colleague Norman guitarist Larry Campbell. The program America’s musical heritage. The peda- Stiles visited Anna Lomax, the musicolo- has aired on about half the PBS stations in gogy draws on the ideas of twentieth- gist’s daughter, to ask permission to use the country, but depended on a one-time century Hungarian composer Zoltán the family name. As they explained the grant from the Bingham Trust and, Cerf Kodály, who advocated “using folk mu- show’s concept of a roaming puppet dog says, “in this environ- sic to teach music,” Cerf explains. “Folk obsessed with tunes, “She just sat there ment, it’s kind of hard songs are a great way to teach young looking blankly at us, and we thought we to find millions of dol- Visit harvardmag.com/ children—they’ve got lots of repetition, were in more and more trouble the more lars to keep making extras for video and audio of Cerf’s work. and call-and-response.” we said,” Cerf recalls. “Then she said, ‘You new episodes.” Should The dog star’s namesake is, of course, guys are crazy—you’re nuts! But I love it!’” those millions turn up, we’ll not have Alan Lomax ’34, who unearthed and re- Lomax doesn’t do “kiddie music.” “We heard the last of Lomax, but if not, it’s safe corded much of America’s folk music, and got the best bluegrass and folk musicians to say that Chris Cerf will find something “‘Hound of Music’ is about as bad a pun as we could possibly find,” Cerf explains— else—or 10 other things—to do. Shakespeare play unearthed by his father, a con man whose unsuccessful track re- Fakery and Shakespeare cord has landed him in jail more often than not. Convinced that the play is his father’s A con man, his son, and a fiction on two levels final con—a sophisticated forgery meant to make good on his life’s goal of adding n some circles, the debate still rag- missing something or that everybody who “to the world’s store of wonder and magic, es about who Shakespeare really was: was telling me I was missing something disorder, confusion, possibility”—Phillips A mere actor? A pseudonymous earl? was missing something,” he explains. “I uses the introduction to challenge the I Rival playwright Christopher Mar- love a lot of it, but somehow that’s not play’s genuineness. Along the way, his lowe? The novelist Arthur Phillips ’90 is enough for a lot of people.” introduction gradually morphs into a not typically listed among the contend- The Tragedy of Arthur plays an elaborate confessional memoir as he becomes in- ers but, with The Tragedy of Arthur (Ran- game with the reader. A narrator named creasingly “addicted to the pleasures of dom House), he has briefly thrown his Arthur Phillips, who bears an uncanny re- self-revelation.” hat into the ring. semblance to the author—he has written Except that the life he recounts is only Structured, Pale Fire-like, as a lengthy novels called Prague and The Egyptologist and glancingly autobiographical. The real introduction to a newly discovered went to Harvard—is under contract to Phillips’s father is distinctly not a con Shakespeare play, the novel concludes with write an introduction to an unpublished man. “Conservative, lawyer, bow-tied,” a full five-act play in impeccable iambic pentameter written by Phillips himself. Phillips presented the play to a handful of Arthur Phillips scholars and theater companies before let- ting them in on the joke—and managed to persuade a few of them of its authenticity along the way.