Books in Brief

The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren (Harcourt, $5.00). Autobiography, like poetry, should follow Wordsworth’s prescription of “emotion recollected in tranquility.” In Mark Van Doren’s account of his life, the tranquility is dominant, but the emotion has been somewhere mislaid. As he moves from happy boyhood and placid adolescence in rural Illinois to his present eminence as one of Columbia’s outstanding teachers, the single note is placidity. In page after page, he runs a gamut from quiet approval to affectionate remonstrance. The poems which interrupt the reminiscent flow are technically fine, but cool enough to make Dryden or Pope sound ardent. Colleagues like the in-turned Joseph Wood Krutch and the brilliantly bravura Raymond Weaver are cut to the same mood as the students who enjoyed Van Doren’s friendship—Meyer Schapiro, Clifton Fadiman, Thomas Merton, Whittaker Chambers, Lionel Trilling, and a host of others—all violently dissimilar to other eyes. They are a shadowy crew, artificially participating in Van Doren’s divorcement from the manic depressions of existence.

R. DE TOLEDANO

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The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren (Harcourt, $5.00). Autobiography, like poetry, should follow Wordsworth’s prescription of “emotion recollected in tranquility.” In Mark Van Doren’s account of his life, the tranquility is dominant, but the emotion has been somewhere mislaid. As he moves from happy boyhood and placid adolescence in rural Illinois to his present eminence as one of Columbia’s outstanding teachers, the single note is placidity. In page after page, he runs a gamut from quiet approval to affectionate remonstrance. The poems which interrupt the reminiscent flow are technically fine, but cool enough to make Dryden or Pope sound ardent. Colleagues like the in-turned Joseph Wood Krutch and the brilliantly bravura Raymond Weaver are cut to the same mood as the students who enjoyed Van Doren’s friendship—Meyer Schapiro, Clifton Fadiman, Thomas Merton, Whittaker Chambers, Lionel Trilling, and a host of others—all violently dissimilar to other eyes. They are a shadowy crew, artificially participating in Van Doren’s divorcement from the manic depressions of existence.

R. DE TOLEDANO