Word: loon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Writer Hendrik Willem Van Loon...
...Loon's van Rijn
Hendrik Van Loon is plagued with large ideas. When he was eleven he started to write a Universal Encyclopedia of Historical Knowledge. A Dutchman, an escapist (says he: "Even today I know the 17th Century better than the 20th"), Van Loon long planned a life of Rembrandt, whom he considers greatest Dutchman of his time. This is it. Written in the form of the diary of Van Loon's mythical great-great-great-grandfather, an Amsterdam physician, great & good friend of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, the book is a voluminous (570 pages), discursive, far-from-formal narrative in which Rembrandt...
Imaginary Dr. Van Loon met Painter van Rijn when Rembrandt's first wife, Saskia, took her last illness. Though she died the men became cronies. Rembrandt's popularity as a portrait-painter had gone; his artistic experiments, his unconventionality, his debts had roused the commercial conscience of the burghers against him. But Van Loon recognized his genius, liked his character, helped him when he could, gave him good advice when he thought he ought to: notably when he noticed the unmarried pregnancy of Rembrandt's housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels. In spite of all, Rembrandt died in bankruptcy, Van Loon was "killed...
...Author. Hendrik Willem Van Loon (pronounced "Van Loan") is fat and 48. Onetime newspaperman, onetime professor of history, he married his third wife after she had divorced her first husband, then left her for his second wife after his second wife had divorced her second husband; now lives with his second wife. While he was in Amsterdam getting material for this book he tried to raise money to pay Rembrandt's debts, rehabilitate the 300-year-old undischarged bankrupt. Other books: The Story of Mankind, Tolerance, America, The Story of the Bible. R. v. R. is the Literary Guild selection...