Mark Van Doren

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Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, John Berryman, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He remained literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–28), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Amongst his notable works, many published in The Kenyon Review, include a collaboration with brother Carl Van Doren, American and British Literature since 1890 (1939), the play The Last Days of Lincoln; critical studies, The Poetry of John Dryden (1920), Shakespeare (1939), The Noble Voice (1945) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949), collections of poems like three book-length narrative poems: Jonathan Gentry (1931), stories, and the verse play The Last Days of Lincoln (1959).

Early life and education
He was born in the town of Hope in Vermilion County, Illinois. The fourth of five sons of the county's doctor, Charles Lucius Van Doren, of remote Dutch ancestry, and wife Eudora Ann Butz, he was raised on his family's farm in eastern Illinois, before his father decided moved to the neighboring town of Urbana, to be closer to good schools.

He was the younger brother of the academic and biographer Carl Van Doren, and starting with whom, all his five brothers attended the local elementary school and high school, and eventually joining the University of Illinois also in the town.

Mark Van Doren earned a B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1914 and a Ph.D. from what became the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University in 1920.

Career
Van Doren joined Columbia University faculty in 1920, his entry was easy as he was preceded by his brother and noted author, Carl Van Doren, though he went on to become one of its greatest teachers, and a "legendary classroom presence". He attained full professorship in 1942, and taught English until 1959, and later he remained Professor Emeritus, 1959–72 His students at Columbia included the poets and writers John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Louis Simpson, Richard Howard, Lionel Trilling (later a colleague), Robert Lax, Anthony Robinson, as well as the Japanologist and interpreter of Japanese literature Donald Keene, author and activist Whittaker Chambers, writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Walter B Pitkin Jr and poet-critic John Hollander.

He twice served on the staff of The Nation during the 1920s and 1930s. He was a member of the Society for the Prevention of World War III.

Van Doren helped Ginsberg avoid jail time in June 1949 by testifying on his behalf when Ginsberg was arrested as an accessory to crimes carried out by Herbert Huncke and others, and was an important influence on Merton, both in Merton's conversion to Catholicism and Merton's poetry. He was a strong advocate of liberal education, and wrote the book, The Liberal Education (1943), which helped promote the influential "great books" movement. Starting 1941, he also did Invitation to Learning a CBS radio show, where as one of the experts he discussed great literature.

He was made a Fellow in American Letters of the Library of Congress and also remained president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Personal life
Mark Van Doren married novelist and the writer of memoir, The Professor and I (1959), Dorothy Graffe Van Doren in 1922, whom he had earlier met at The Nation. His successful book, Anthology of World Poetry, enabled the couple to buy a house on Bleecker Street in the New York City in February 1929, before markets collapsed.

Their son, Charles Van Doren (born February 12, 1926), briefly achieved renown as the winner of the rigged game show Twenty-One. In the film Quiz Show (1994), Mark Van Doren was played by Paul Scofield, who earned an Academy Award nomination in Best Supporting Actor category for his performance. Their second son is John Van Doren who also lives in Cornwall, Connecticut at the farmstead, where their father did most of his writing between academic years, and where he moved after retirement.

Mark Van Doren died on December 10, 1972, in Torrington, Connecticut, aged 78; two days after undergoing surgery for circulatory problems at the Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, and was interred at Cornwall Hollow Cemetery in Connecticut. Lion: A Memoir of Mark Van Doren (1991), by Dan Wakefield won the 1992 Cohen Awards.

Recognition
Van Doren's correspondence with Allen Tate is at Vanderbilt University. Since 1962, students of Columbia College have honored a great teacher at the school each year with the "Mark Van Doren Award".

A Canadian alternative rock band named themselves in honor of Mark van Doren's poem, "Our Lady Peace".

Poetry

 * Spring Thunder (1924)
 * An Anthology of World Poetry (1928)
 * Jonathan Gentry (1931), (Editor)
 * The Oxford Book of American Prose, (OUP), (1932)
 * Winter Diary (1935)
 * Collected Poems 1922–1938 (1939), Winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
 * The Mayfield Deer (1941)
 * Selected poems (Holt), (1954)
 * The Last Days of Lincoln, a play in six scenes (1959), a Verse Play
 * Our Lady Peace
 * The Story-Teller (N/A)
 * Collected and New Poems 1924–1963 (1963)

Novels

 * The Transients (1935)
 * Windless Cabins (1940)
 * Tilda (1943)

Short stories

 * Nobody Say a Word (1954)

Non-fiction

 * The Poetry of John Dryden (1920)
 * Introduction to Bartram's Travels (1928)
 * An Autobiography of America, (A. & C. Boni), )1929)
 * American poets, 1630-1930 (Little, Brown), (1932)
 * American and British Literature Since 1890 (1939), with Carl Van Doren
 * Shakespeare (1939)
 * The Liberal Education (1943)
 * The night of the summer solstice: & other stories of the Russian war, (Henry Holt and Company), (1943)
 * The Noble Voice (1946)
 * Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949)
 * Introduction to Poetry (1951)
 * The Autobiography Of Mark Van Doren (1958)
 * The Happy Critic (1961)
 * Mark Van Doren on great poems of Western literature, (Collier Books), (1962)

Audio/video

 * Mark Van Doren Reads from His Collected and New Poems (Folkways Records, 1967)

Reviews
"This well-edited, attractive selection (about one-fourth of the surviving letters) brings Mark Van Doren alive, especially to those who knew him and can hear the voice behind the written words. It should help criticism begin to engage the works and personality of a very considerable American 'man of letters': superb poet and critic, wide-ranging editor, accomplished storyteller and playwright, and devoted educator."

Quotes

 * "The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated."
 * "Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth."
 * "The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."