Shake Well Before Using was published by Simon & Schuster in 1948, the successor to Try and Stop Me (1944), which had sold over half a million copies. The formula was identical — a miscellany of anecdotes, jokes, and brief comic pieces organized by theme — but the material was largely new, drawn from Cerf’s postwar social life, his syndicated newspaper column “Try and Stop Me” (which ran in over a hundred papers), and his growing circle of acquaintances in Hollywood and television.
The postwar additions are the most interesting material. The stories about returning veterans, about the new prosperity, about the first stirrings of television culture (Cerf would begin appearing on What’s My Line? in 1951) capture a moment when American humor was shifting from the urbane literary comedy of the prewar New Yorker to something broader and more populist. Cerf, who had a foot in both worlds, preserved anecdotes from both: drawing-room witticisms sit alongside GI humor, Broadway stories alongside California jokes.
The title is pure Cerf — a gentle pun that doubles as an instruction for using the book: dip in at random, read a few pages, share the best stories at dinner. The book was designed for browsing rather than sustained reading, and it works best that way. Cerf understood that humor is social — jokes exist to be retold — and his books were essentially repositories of social ammunition for middle-class Americans who wanted to be entertaining.
Collecting Shake Well Before Using
First edition (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1948): Illustrated by Carl Rose. Cloth, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Later editions: $3–$8