His approach to the teaching of writing is different from most others: "I teach reading, not writing." In the opening lecture of Humanities 119 he said that by searching for the sources of power in a story "I might be able to help you write better novels someday." Thus he talks not of style to his students, but of "themes, visions, fables, wisdom."

He tells the story of Herman Wouk (for whom he makes no claims as a novelist) who decided to be a writer, and spent three years just reading the great stories of the world. This is close to what Van Doren believes one should do and modern novelists do not.

One senses that he believes certain stories are true, and have meaning for all men in all ages. These are the stories that endure, and the ones that should serve as models for young writers. Today, he says, "Writers choose mediocre models--last year's novel, not Homer."

If Van Doren has one consistent point to make about style it is that the writer must be completely drenched with his subject before writing. Otherwise his creation lacks unity and wholeness. He relates the story of how he wrote his play, The Last Days of Lincoln. For three years he prowled around New York bookstores, buying and reading everything he could find about Lincoln. One day he was on a lecture tour in North Caroline. Although he had left all his notes home Van Doren says "I heard Lincoln talking to me." He took out the hardbound black notebook he always keeps with him and began to write. Within a week the play was virtually complete.

An incipient writer remembers some advice given him by a newspaper editor for whom he worked during high school. "This piece sounds like you have been writing from notes. Chew everything up and spit it out in one stream" he said. If the metaphor is a bit inelegant the advice is sound, and it is not an accident that the editor was one of Van Doren's most devoted and fondly remembered students at Columbia.

Van Doren and his wife now reside in the apartment on the top floor of Leverett House's F tower once occupied by his old friend, Archibald MacLeish. After talking for more than an hour one morning last week Van Doren arose and went over to the window, which overlooks the Charles, the Business School, and other local phenomena.

With an excited grin he embraced the vista, and started asking questions of his visitor: "What is the name of that hill in the background, I haven't found anyone who can tell me? What are those small boats (the answer was sculls)?" Then he pointed to two small ducks swimming blithely past an onrushing shell. "Look at that pair" he said, "my wife and I have noticed they are always together, and are never bothered by the boats."

Perhaps all that Van Doren had been trying to say about the course, literature, and life came clear in those reactions. He lives with a great sense of personal discovery. He becomes excited about books, horses, about sunshine as if it were all new to him, even new to the world. His poems and his Autobiography are about his discovery of the world, neither more nor less. His criticism, like his lectures, are primarily records of his response to particular books.

He is simply a very happy man, finding joy in the perpetual newness of the world and the imaginations of men. He teaches us, above all, to seek this joy.