Thread Name: "Dear Donald, Dear Bennett" & "BOTM Club Dividend" From: Scot Kamins <kamins@removed> Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 10:33:54 -0800 Just finished reading "Dear Donald, Dear Bennett" from the point of view of a Modern Library trivia seeker - and now you don't have to. While it's a charming little read showing as it does the great friendship between off-to-war [WW II] Donald Klopfer and stay-at-home-and-run-the-show Bennett Cerf, there's little here to recommend to ML collectors. In fact, there aren't more than a dozen references to the ML. The most important bits are about the proposal, development, and rapid success of the illustrated series; and about wartime difficulties in scoring enough paper (access to which the government allocated as a scarce wartime resource)to make books. One thing of interest was referral to the Book of the Month Club using various ML titles as "dividends." I don't know what this means. Can anyone enlighten me about this? ------------------------------------- From: <jpete9530@removed> ((John Peterson) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 14:24:04 -0500 I think it's a freebie book that you got when you had purchased a certain number of the regular monthly offerings. ------------------------------------- From: Printmat@removed> ((Bob Reidel) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 14:18:53 EST BOMC dividends were offered as cake-icing incentives -- like, "buy this set of Balzac and we'll throw in this ML Illustrated Alice free!" -- or at reduced prices, with additional purchase. I see an awful lot of book club editions with the ubiquitous dividend legend on the front flap. This is how I remember it from the 1960s and '70s -- it would make sense that Cerg was fiddling with the idea of using books already on hand in the '40s. ------------------------------------- From: Printmat@removed> ((Bob Reidel) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 14:29:02 EST Cerg, of course, was Bennett Cerf's little brother, Bennett Cerg. Bennett Cerf was the sixth of 26 children, the eldest being his big sister, Bennett Cera. ------------------------------------- From: Scot Kamins <kamins@removed> Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 11:55:02 -0800 And the youngest being Bennett Cerz, the well-known classical cellist? -------------------------------------