Dorothy Van Doren -- Garbo

Recently I did a series of posts about The Fireside Book of Favorite American Songs and in this post I wrote about historian Carl Van Doren, who had written a foreword to The Fireside Book shortly before his death. Van Doren was from a distinguished family. His brother Mark was a prize-winning poet and his sister-in-law Dorothy was a magazine editor, novelist, and, later in life, a writer of humorous family anecdotes, a bit like the work of Jean Kerr or Betty MacDonald, with perhaps a dash of Erma Bombeck. 

Wikipedia supplied me with this info:  "Dorothy Van Doren was an editor at The Nation magazine for many years. During World War II she was chief editor of the English Feature Desk at the United States Office of War Information, which was responsible for presenting a human and appealing image of American life through the international broadcasts of the Voice of America, directed by John Houseman."

 

 

Van Doren edited The Lost Art, a collection of letters by seven American women. The letter-writers were Abigail Adams, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Margaret Fuller, and Charlotte Bronte.(I hasten to add that the hand in this photo is not mine.)

Early in her  life, Dorothy wrote a number of novels including Brother and Brother, Flowering Quince. and her first novel, The Strangers.

 

 

 

There must be a copy somewhere of Strangers but I can't locate one or even an image of the dust jacket or title page. I do have the headline and intro the New York Times book review.

After her early books, Dorothy Van Doren continued to write fiction but her family, career and other interests slowed her production. Those First Affections was published when Dorothy was in her early forties.

 

Those First Affections was followed four years later by Dacey Hamilton.

 

You can read Dacey Hamilton online over at Internet Archive.

For some time beginning in the 1950s, Dorothy's life was overshadowed by that of her son Charles. The government was conducting hearings about everybody and everything, including television quiz shows, and Charles Van Doren testified that he'd been fed answers while a contestant on "Twenty-One." The 1990s film "Quiz Show" is about the scandal. Here's a photo of Dorothy and her husband Mark at home with Charles.

 

Dorothy Van Doren is best remembered today for her autobiographical novel The Country Wife. She also wrote The Professor and I, and I don't know if the title was a nod to Betty MacDonald's runaway 1945 bestseller The Egg and I. 

You can read The Professor and I right here.

 

As I was researching this post, Dorothy's name came up in connection with the book Cinema Nation. I've reserved the film-review anthology from our public library. I know Dorothy Van Doren did journalism and essays and I'd like to read some of her work of that type. I hope she wrote about film in Cinema Nation. I'll find out soon. [NOTE: I did find out that there are two reviews by Dorothy's husband Mark in this volume but none with Dorothy's byline.]

 

 

In the late 20th century, people who'd never read a single issue of The Nation or any of Dorothy Van Doren's novels may still have been aware of her writing. Her work appeared in THIS WEEK, a television schedule supplement tucked into newspapers on or near the weekend. Van Doren wrote a number of short articles for THIS WEEK. Some of these were used int the volume Men, Women, and Cats.

 

 I saw a nice thing on the internet about a 2010 reading Dorothy's son Charles (he of quiz show fame) did of his mother's work. I was glad he'd done that before he himself passed at the age of 94. Recently I found a video of the reading, which was titled "Fanny's Girl." You can see it online HERE.

 

 Next week:  A bit about another member of this extended family