Alfred Knopf Recounts High Points In Near Half Century of Publishing

H. L. Mencken's hypochondria, Willa Cather's will, and Thomas Mann's four-day 80th birthday party all came up for discussion last night as Alfred A. Knopf reminisced about his 45 years in the publishing business at a Lowell House Ford Dinner.

The biggest laugh of the evening came when Knopf told how a printer accidentally threw the only copy of Clarence Day's "Life With Father" into the garbage.

In the same vein, the septuagenarian publisher described his experiences with such authors as Thomas Mann and Willa Cather. He told of a college professor who wrote about a Montana river that was "like a navel cord" and "waterways that really brought forth men and women." He talked about Kahill Gibran, who wrote The Prophet, Knopf's best-selling book, which only began to drop in sales when Knopf started advertising it.

But most of the time Knopf told about H. L. Mencken--his birthdays, his jokes, and his work. It was Mencken who suggested that Knopf publish Mann's works in English. It was also Mencken who gave Knopf a "moustache cup" for his birthday so that he could drink without endangering his copious whiskers. Concerning his own birthday, Mencken once said "I used to spend my birthday in prayer but today I went to a brewery and the scheme worked fine."