No Longer Square

Not so long ago, no self-respecting intellectual would have admitted owning a television set, anymore than he would dare to express a liking for Norman Vincent Peale or California burgundy. But nowadays the TV box is no longer square. An intellectual can laughingly confess to TV addiction, and the lower-brow the program the better. Even so eminent a figure as Columbia University's Professor Mark Van Doren has been a convert ever since his son Charles triumphed on Twenty-One.

In a new book, The Professor and I (Appleton-Century-Crofts; $3.95), Dorothy Van Doren reveals that her husband is an addict "not of the super, the egghead, type of program . . . but of mysteries, westerns, crime stories, true stories and a quiz or two. He is lost. I get myself comfortable on the living-room sofa by the fire with a book, and presently I hear the beginning of the idiot commercial and know it has started again. Sometimes I watch too; sometimes I stick to the book. But the professor is faithful--all too often he is faithful. One evening there was an unusual amount of shouting and bawling. When it was over I said:

" 'What on earth was that?'

" 'Wrestling,' he confessed shamefacedly. I just wanted to see what it was like.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.