My column today is titled “Shakespeare with Van Doren.” A reader writes,

Hi, Jay,

I have to confess: When I saw your title, I thought, “Jay has really outdone himself. Mamie Van Doren reciting or enacting Shakespeare? That is intriguing.” But alas . . .

Another reader writes,

The only Van Doren I had heard of is Mamie. You have broadened my horizons. Today, by the way, Mamie is 93.

Wikipedia describes Ms. Van Doren as “an American actress, singer, model, and sex symbol who rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s.” She was one of the “Three M’s,” along with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. (Marilyn contributes two M’s, I guess.)

Mamie Van Doren was born Joan Lucille Olander in Rowena, S.D. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford, the movie star. In Hollywood, she was given that Dutch last name, “Van Doren,” and the first name of the First Lady, Mrs. Eisenhower.

She has been married five times. Her life, I gather, has not been easy.

My column today is about Mark Van Doren and his 1939 book Shakespeare. Van Doren was a legendary professor of English, who worked at Columbia University. His brother was Carl Van Doren, also a professor at Columbia, who in 1939 won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Benjamin Franklin. The year 1939 was big for the Van Doren brothers.

In 1940, Mark won a Pulitzer for his collected poems.

The Van Doren brothers were Men from Hope. They were born in Hope, Ill., a farming community.

Mark Van Doren was the father of Charles Van Doren, a considerable scholar, writer, and editor, who spent most of his career with Encyclopædia Britannica. Unfortunately, he will always be known, if known at all, for his role in the quiz-show scandal.

Among Mark Van Doren’s students were Lionel Trilling, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Whittaker Chambers, and Thomas Merton. Two of his students, I have known personally: Norman Podhoretz and Jeffrey Hart. (I have perhaps known others — not sure.)

In 2006, Jeff wrote a piece for The New Criterion: “Mark Van Doren & American classicism.” The subtitle of that piece is, “A student and friend remembers the critic.”

Thomas Merton, as you recall, became a Trappist monk. He lived at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Ky. He and Van Doren were lifelong friends (though, as I say in my column, student died before teacher).

I’ve received a note from Thomas H. Dougherty:

Hi, Jay,

. . . My father, Dr. Jude P. Dougherty, was an acquaintance of both Professor Van Doren and Thomas Merton. Dad was then on the philosophy faculty at Bellarmine College. We lived in Louisville from 1957 to 1965, and Dad would often take the professor out to Gethsemani to meet with Merton. Merton would periodically rely on Dad for travel to and from Louisville.

Dad passed away in 2021, but I remember his sharing a conversation he had with Professor Van Doren after the quiz-show scandal involving his son. Dad asked how his son was doing. The professor said, “Charlie’s doing okay and he’ll get through this.”

Your article brought back fond memories of Dad. Thank you!

In a subsequent note, Tom Dougherty tells me this about his father:

He grew up in very challenging circumstances: was orphaned at a young age during the Depression; was raised in St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Louisville; extended family had no money; worked his way through Catholic University, earning a BA, MA, and PhD — later becoming Dean.

In my column today, I explain that Mark Van Doren edited an anthology of world poetry — whose title was just that: “An Anthology of World Poetry.” The book sold well and made Van Doren some money. With it, he bought a house for his family on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

Here is a note from Donald Mace Williams: poet, novelist, translator, journalist, and all-around man of letters:

Good Lord, Jay, you have written about a man whose book An Anthology of World Poetry has been — for whatever this is worth — the most powerful single influence on my writing life. That book was in the tent where I lived in the Texas brush country for two years in the middle of the Great Depression. I learned to read there and was soon absorbing myself in the book. My parents quoted from the Greek and Persian poems it included. In it, and in the augmented edition they gave me for Christmas in 1948, there are poems from Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, and on and on, ending of course with many pages of English and American poetry. A remarkable number of the translations are fine poetry themselves.

Your appreciation of Van Doren has impelled me finally to read his brief preface. In it, he says, “This is an anthology of the world’s best poetry in the best English I could unearth, and when I found no good English at all I left the poet out.”

Bravo. I am afraid the book is out of print, now and probably forever. It’s good to know, at least, that it sold enough copies in its heyday to make money for Van Doren.

Mr. Williams adds,

One more result of your column is that I am going to go back and reread Antony and Cleopatra.

Nothing more dazzling, so far as I am aware, has been written in the English language.

One more note:

Jay:

Van Doren’s Shakespeare is one of my favorite books. Normally, I read only advanced mathematics, but I dwell on Shakespeare, usually taking a copy of Van Doren’s book with me on trips. I also was puzzled how two farm boys from Illinois, he and his older brother Carl, ended up in the top echelons of Columbia University. Likely, Shakespeare’s power of language led them to higher worlds?

Your article deeply surprised me. I thought Mark Van Doren’s book was going to slip into the remorseless trash bin of history.

It ought to be deathless, like its subject, Shakespeare.

Thank you to all readers and correspondents.