“Van Doren” and “Redford”

‘HOW,” I asked Charles Van Doren, “could you possibly have named all the Aleutian Islands?” We were at lunch in the Columbia Faculty Club on Morningside Drive. That might not actually have been the question, but at least the type of question. A typical Charles answer was: “When I was a child, one of my hobbies was geography [or astronomy, or genealogy], and I have a good memory.” Well, maybe so.

The point to bear in mind is that in Charles’s Columbia environment—students and colleagues alike—Charles’s quiz-show fame on Twenty-One was not very important. It is exactly here that I think the roots of Charles’s tragicomedy lie, and not in the wholly suppositious notion of “parricide” advanced by the Robert Redford movie Quiz Show

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

‘HOW,” I asked Charles Van Doren, “could you possibly have named all the Aleutian Islands?” We were at lunch in the Columbia Faculty Club on Morningside Drive. That might not actually have been the question, but at least the type of question. A typical Charles answer was: “When I was a child, one of my hobbies was geography [or astronomy, or genealogy], and I have a good memory.” Well, maybe so.

The point to bear in mind is that in Charles’s Columbia environment—students and colleagues alike—Charles’s quiz-show fame on Twenty-One was not very important. It is exactly here that I think the roots of Charles’s tragicomedy lie, and not in the wholly suppositious notion of “parricide” advanced by the Robert Redford movie Quiz Show