Arts and Manners

In Memoriam: Charles Van Doren

The personable Mr. Charles Van Doren, who has made piles of money on sensationally useless information, was himself a kind of windfall for the professional optimists. And I am putting this in the past tense because, in the meanwhile, even they must have learned to comprehend that what first looked, to some, like an outburst of learning on the TV screen was but a mirage. Yet for a while Mr. Van Doren seemed to prove (to Time, for instance) that, given a break, education may still catch up with that infernal machine. Why? Because (we were told by the conforming optimists) the nice young man demonstrated that knowledge is more important than money. And how did he prove this? By making, with a display of knowledge, oodles of money.

WS

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William S. Schlamm

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In Memoriam: Charles Van Doren

The personable Mr. Charles Van Doren, who has made piles of money on sensationally useless information, was himself a kind of windfall for the professional optimists. And I am putting this in the past tense because, in the meanwhile, even they must have learned to comprehend that what first looked, to some, like an outburst of learning on the TV screen was but a mirage. Yet for a while Mr. Van Doren seemed to prove (to Time, for instance) that, given a break, education may still catch up with that infernal machine. Why? Because (we were told by the conforming optimists) the nice young man demonstrated that knowledge is more important than money. And how did he prove this? By making, with a display of knowledge, oodles of money.