Dan's Papers 10/30/2006 08:37 AM

Issue #31, October 27, 2006 Who’s Here

Christopher Cerf Editor

By Christian McLean

While many great pioneers are immortalized in sculptures of stone or bronze, have wings of libraries dedicated in their honor, or streets named after them, Christopher Cerf has been gifted immortality in the form of a puppet and I don’t think he’d have it any other way. You might not peg the man who has had Abbie Hoffman scribble out Woodstock Generation on the floor of his Random House office as the same man who has spent the past 38 years of his life composing songs for “Sesame Street.” Or the man who compiled The Iraq War Reader as the same man who wrote for National Lampoon, but juxtapositions like these have shaped Chris Cerf since he was a child, when he spent dinnertime with the likes of William Faulkner one night and Dr. Seuss the next. That about sums the man up, running the gamut between The Sound and the Fury and Horton Hears a Who. There are still glimpses of this child in the 65-year-old Cerf — still with a smile on his face and a jovial, if not whimsical, nature to everything he does.

His father, Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House, told Christopher that he could be anything he wanted when he grew up, but if it weren’t in publishing he’d kill him. He wasn’t serious, of Dan's Traffic Cam course, and when it came down to it, Chris already had his eye on Traffic Cam the publishing world. Chris once even told a cab driver that he wanted to be just like his father because he wanted to sit around and tell jokes all day. As a child he saw his father as a man of great levity, but also someone who deeply cared about his authors, constantly having them to his Manhattan townhouse for dinners and parties. And while Bennett Cerf told jokes and ran Random House, Chris’ mother, Phyllis, held her own in the publishing business. She managed Beginner Books, a children’s imprint there. It is in these

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two people and through their careers that Cerf began to learn the power of writing and the importance of educating children in lighthearted yet moving ways.

Apart from being a lover of books, Bennett Cerf was also a lover of music, though not a musician. Chris was offered piano lessons, originally in the field of classical music, but the Mozart was quickly cast aside for a little good old fashioned rock and roll. Emulating men like Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis, there would be no tickling of the ivory for Chris, instead, somewhat to the audile dismay of his parents, he banged the hell out of the keys and found his calling — or at least part of it.

At Harvard, Chris wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. His years there also cemented a friendship with Henry Beard, a man who would help shape and guide his life. Fresh out of college, Cerf did a stint in the Army National Guard and then in 1963, landed an editorial position at Random House, where he had worked for many summers. Young and fresh, he was handed the task of editing the hipsters and counter culture authors of the sixties. Essentially he had the responsibility of keeping tabs on Andy Warhol, George Plimpton, and the founder of the Yippie movement, Abbie Hoffman, but at the same time, he was also editing Dr. Seuss.

It was while at Random House that Chris began traveling to the Hamptons. His first year, he and a friend, Geoffrey Gates, rented a shack on stilts overlooking the ocean on Southampton’s Meadow Lane. They returned to the same little house for the next few years. “Abbie [Hoffman] was one of the best chicken barbecuers and he would come and make these incredible chicken dinners… and you wouldn’t have expected that… Before he went to levitate the Pentagon he’d come over for chicken dinners,” Chris said, reminiscing of those years. After Chris married Geneviève Charbin in 1972 he moved out of the shack, and he and his wife rented the house across the street. Geneviève and Chris would eventually divorce, but she remains an important figure in his life.

In 1970, in his eighth year at Random House, two job offers came about. The first was from some Harvard friends at a newly-formed magazine called National Lampoon; the second was from the Children’s Television Workshop’s (CTW) fledgling television program starring a cast of puppets. Cerf was torn. He wanted to write for Lampoon, but the gig at “Sesame Street” offered him both the position as founding editor of the CTW’s book department and a chance to compose music. Compounding the issue was the sentimental feelings toward his father and Random House. But Cerf saw an opportunity at “Sesame Street” to do two things he loved. When Joan Cooney, founder of the CTW and “Sesame Street,” told him if he took the job, they would allow him to write for Lampoon, Cerf embarked on a 38-year (and still going) career at the most influential television show ever created.

Though his work in the book department at “Sesame Street” was instrumental, Cerf’s legacy will always be his music. His songs, playful and light, mask the educational values they instill. In pieces like “Put Down the Duckie,” Cerf captures the importance of children letting go of their childhood attachments (Ernie’s rubber duckie) in order to move on to the next phase of their lives — kind of like what Cerf had done when he left Random House for the CTW and Lampoon in 1970.

It isn’t every day that someone gets a Muppet made in their honor, but in 1973 Little Chrissy and the Alphabeats made their musical debut on “Sesame Street.” The blue Muppet, with wild hair and

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glasses, sang (with Cerf’s help) and hammered away on his piano keys for over three decades.

In 1979, Cerf and Tony Hendra, who he had worked with at National Lampoon, collaborated with Peter Elbling and co-edited The 80’s: A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade 1980-1989. The usuals, Plimpton, Hoffman, and Henry Beard, among others, all contributed. In the farce about a decade which hadn’t even begun yet, Ted Kennedy becomes President only to resign ten days later, meat is made illegal, and Disney purchases the United Kingdom — It is the wit and satire you would expect.

Cerf would collaborate with friends on many other books, some filled with satire, some poignant and topical. Included in these is The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation; The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices; Marlo Thomas & Friends: Free to Be... a Family; The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions; The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook; Marlo Thomas & Friends: Thanks and Giving: All Year Long (the accompanying CD won a Grammy). Most recently, Chris co-authored the children’s book Blackie, The Horse Who Stood Still with his dear friend, artist Paige Peterson.

Over the past forty years, Cerf has spent time all over the Hamptons but 18 years ago, Henry Beard told him there was a house for sale on Gerard Drive, a road Cerf had summered on for a few years before. Chris drove out and bought the house practically on the spot. The expansive vista of Gardiners Island has been his ever since. It is on that deck, among great friends and wonderful food, that many of Chris’ more recent projects have come about; where he brainstormed ideas for The Book of Sequels with Beard and “Cliffhanger,” a small section of his new television series “Between the Lions” (which has amassed a slew of Emmys). The purpose of the show is geared toward teaching children to read. It follows much of the same principals that were so effective in the PBS show “The Electric Company,” which he worked on back in the seventies. His newest project “Lomax: The Hound of Music,” keenly named after musicologist Alan Lomax, is designed to help children learn about music.

Somehow between still composing for “Sesame Street,” running his company, Sirius Thinking, composing/writing/co-producing “Between the Lions” and “Lomax,” and promoting the new children’s book, Chris Cerf still finds time to oversee the Modern Library imprint at Random House – which is based on the founding collection of the publishing business his father created 81 years ago.

While all this seems like it would be incredibly stressful and taxing to many, Cerf seems to carry these tasks as if they weigh less than a feather. Whether it is satire, serious writing or songs, Chris has spent his life education children and adults in the most entertaining and creative of ways. He has found a means of doing the things he cares most about, with his closest friends, and he seems to have truly enjoyed every minute of it. For any child who has met the ever- smiling, kind-hearted Cerf I can almost hear them echoing Chris’ childhood words, “I want to be just like him when I grow up, he gets to sits around and tells jokes all day.”

Chris Cerf and Paige Peterson will be signing Blackie, The Horse Who Stood Still on Saturday, October 28th, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at East End Books in East Hampton.

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