Charles Van Doren (1926–2019)

The New York Times has an obituary for Charles Van Doren, who has died at the age of ninety-three. The snarky Times headline calls Van Doren “a quiz show whiz who wasn’t.” Yes, the quiz-show scandals.

But here’s another way to think of Charles Van Doren: as a deeply thoughtful student of the sorrows and possibilities of human life. And now I’m borrowing from a post I wrote in 2006:

In 1999, Van Doren was invited to address a reunion of Columbia College’s class of 1959. Like these alums, he started at Columbia in 1955 (as an assistant professor); he resigned in 1959. In the course of some remarks on how to live late in one’s life, he mentions Aeneas’s journey to the world of the dead, which begins at Lake Avernus in Italy, and quotes the Sibyl’s words to Aeneas:

“The way downward is easy from Avernus.
Black Dis’s door stands open night and day.
But to retrace your steps to heaven's air,
There is the trouble, there is the toil.”

[Virgil, Aeneid 6, translated by Robert Fitzgerald]

Van Doren notes (in his own translation) the advice that the shade of Phlegyas gives Aeneas: “Study justice, and do not scorn the gods!” (Phlegyas, enraged after Apollo seduced his daughter, set fire to the god's temple at Delphi.) Van Doren goes on to say that

None of us can take Aeneas’s journey, nor, in fact, did he. The story of his descent into the Underworld and his return to the brightness of the sun is a myth, and myths are stories that are so true they can never happen. Something like his journey may happen to anyone. The human name for it may be despair.

Despair — the Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard called it. As we enter this last part of our time we mustn’t forget that bad things can happen. The failure of hopes, the death of friends, the venality of politicians, the manifest cruelty that stalks the world — these may tempt us to descend from Avernus into that dark place where safety seems to lie. But then we scorn the gods. This great line is from Paul Valéry’s “Le cimitière mari”:

Le vent se lève; il faut tenter de vivre!

The wind's rising; we have to try to live!

Related reading
“All the Answers” (Van Doren’s 2008 New Yorker piece on the quiz-show scandals)
Two accounts of Van Doren’s talk — 1, 2 — from members of the class of ’59

“What’s a parvenu?”

A nice bit of dialogue from Stan & Ollie (dir. Jon S. Baird, 2018), with Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan), Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly), and Hal Roach (Danny Huston):

Laurel: He's a cheapskate, a skinflint, and a — and a parvenu.

Hardy: A parvenu?

Laurel: He thinks because my contract's up and yours isn't that I won't be able to go anyplace else and I'll have to take what he's offering.

Roach: Wait, wait, wait, wait — what's a parvenu?

Laurel: Well, it's someone who started out with nothing, got rich, but has no class. Look it up in the dictionary, Hal. There's a picture of you.

Or there was. Here’s Merriam-Webster’s entry.

How to improve writing (no. 82)

From a New York Times article on funny stuff at the Friars Club:

Former staff members described questionable spending and sloppy bookkeeping, including a $160,000 loan to the executive director without interest that was never written down.

“To the executive director without interest that was never written down”: that’s an awfully clumsy string of sentence elements. Better:

Former staff members described questionable spending and sloppy bookkeeping, including an unrecorded interest-free $160,000 loan to the executive director.

When I read the news, I don’t go looking for things. They present themselves, and my sentence-repair alarm goes off. Elaine gets credit for “interest-free,” which she suggested when I read the sentence aloud.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 82 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

“Him’s”

Dane has told Aunt Violet and her husband Wyck that someone named Theo is moving in with him.


Alice Munro, “Queer Streak.” In The Progress of Love (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

Also from Alice Munro
“Rusted seams” : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling” : “A radiance behind it” : Opinions : At the Manor : “Noisy and shiny” : “The evening lunch” : “Emptiness, rumor, and absurdity”

“Emptiness, rumor, and absurdity”

Violet is home in South Sherbooke Township, writing a letter to her boyfriend in Ottawa. Violet’s father has been receiving anonymous threats to his life. Violet writes as she guards the household while the rest of her family sleeps.


Alice Munro, “A Queer Streak.” In The Progress of Love (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

Also from Alice Munro
“Rusted seams” : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling” : “A radiance behind it” : Opinions : At the Manor : “Noisy and shiny” : “The evening lunch” : “Mr. X and Mr. B”

PBS, sheesh

“. . . between he and Hillary Clinton . . .”

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Pete Buttigieg on being gay and being married

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, addressing the LGBTQ Victory Fund brunch in Washington, D.C., this past Sunday:

“When I was younger, I would have done anything to not be gay. When I began to halfway realize what it meant that I felt the way I did about people I saw in the hallway at school or the dining hall in college, it launched in me something I can only describe as a kind of war. And if that war had been settled on the terms that I would have wished for when I was fifteen, or twenty, or, frankly, even twenty-five, I would not be standing here. If you had offered me a pill to make me straight, I would’ve swallowed it before you had time to give me a sip of water. It is a hard thing to think about now. It’s hard to face the truth that there were times in my life when, if you had shown me exactly what it was inside me that made me gay, I would have cut it out with a knife.

“And the reason it’s so awful to think about isn’t just the knowledge that so many young people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality or their gender identity do just that — they harm themselves, figuratively or literally. But the real reason that it’s so hard to think about is that if I had had the chance to do that, I would never have found my way to Chasten [Chasten Glezman, Buttigieg’s husband]. That the best thing in my life, my marriage, might not have happened at all. My marriage, this thing I can’t even describe without going into clichés, like talking about how my world went from black and white to color the moment we held hands toward the end of our first date. The thing that made it possible for me to get through the loss of my father this year, this man who lifted up not just me but dad and mom through those last awful days. How dark the thought that the man that I admire and care about and love sharing with the rest of the country, and even more importantly, can’t wait to share one day with raising children, might not have been part of my life at all. Thank God there was no pill. Thank God there was no knife.

”People talk about things like marriage equality as a moral issue. And it is certainly a moral issue as far as I’m concerned. It’s a moral issue because being married to Chasten has made me a better human being, because it has made me more compassionate, more understanding, more self-aware, and more decent. My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man. And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.

“And speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that’s the thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

[My transcription and paragraphing. The passage I’ve transcribed begins at 8:35.]

Kirstjen Nielsen and Dante

What might Dante devise for Kirstjen Nielsen? I imagine an endless cage, one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. I think this punishment possesses the Dantean element of contrapasso, whereby punishment fits the crime, often by means of a bitter, mordant wit. Here the offender wanders alone, never able to find an exit, never able to find asylum.

But there’s no need for Dante: I would suggest that Nielsen has made a cage of her own. She will always be known for abetting the cruel xenophobe who employed her. No exit from that cage.

How to improve writing (no. 81)

Only a month ago Kirstjen Nielsen was insisting that cages for children are “sub-parts” of “facilities.” But now she’s out. The New York Times could have taken more care with this paragraph from an article reporting the departure of Kirstjen Nielsen from the Department of Homeland Security:

Mr. Trump enjoyed Ms. Nielsen's television appearances, administration aides said. But despite several stories about how much better her relationship with Mr. Trump was, Ms. Nielsen never learned how to manage him, people familiar with their discussions said. He often felt lectured to by Ms. Nielsen, the people familiar with the discussions said.

“Better” raises questions that the article doesn’t answer: better than what? better than when? There’s ungainly repetition: “people familiar with their discussions said,” “the people familiar with the discussions said.” And a horribly awkward passive verb: “He often felt lectured to by Ms. Nielsen.” Imagine speaking words to that effect: “I often feel lectured to by you.”

Better:

Mr. Trump enjoyed Ms. Nielsen's television appearances, administration aides said. But despite stories of an improved Trump–Nielsen relationship, people familiar with the relationship said that Ms. Nielsen never learned how to manage Mr. Trump, and that he often felt that she lectured him.

Even “breaking news,” as they call it, can wait another minute for writer(s) to get the sentences right. Three writers for this article.

*

April 8: Now there are four writers credited.


Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 81 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Domestic comedy

“Look, a boy weatherman!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)