SEMO FORUM PUTS PEOPLE WITH GREATS IN LITERATURE

Spending the afternoon with the likes of Mark Twain, Homer and Walt Whitman along with Kate, Beatrice, Petruchio, Leonato and Benedick from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Much Ado About Nothing" and the apprentice from Goethe's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" would delight anyone with a love of literature. That was the highlight of Sunday's Showcasing the Cannon, the first event of Southeast Missouri State University's Millennial Symposium of the Arts.

Millennial coordinators Drs. Marc Strauss and Dave Reinheimer had asked the help of university faculty and students in this project.

They focused the project on the 17 famous, and not-so-famous, names etched in stone on the Kent Library facade. Most cannot name the 17, let alone testify as to what they have written.

"Our goal is to get as many students involved as we can in reading and talking about the authors," said Reinheimer.

The symposium continues through Thursday at Kent Library with three authors being studied at each noon session. The Parsons Dance Co., an internationally acclaimed, New York City-based modern dance group, will perform at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Parker 210 Dance Studio and again at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Academic Auditorium.

Sunday's interactive presentations were intended to inflame or impress, infuriate or confirm and (the coordinators hoped) shake, rattle and roll the audience's thinking. Counterpoint responses from a rich diversity of minority and alternative opinions followed the sessions.

Walt Whitman, who in 1855 shouted his poetry on the streets of New York, used a sound system to lend a modern-day interpretation to his works.

Huck Finn and Jim presented an excerpt from Chapter 14 of Twain's 1844 "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in which Jim gave his views on the wisdom of King Solomon.

"The remainder of the presentations will be a little more formal," said Strauss. Today was the showcase, so it was an exception.

A round table forum followed where university faculty, alumni and community members discussed the history and rationale behind the names on the library frieze and debated the merits of their inclusion in the canon.

The checkered history of the names was investigated in Professor H.O. Grauel's book, "His Essays on This and That." It would be nice to think the names were chosen for their literary contribution to the canon of the time, but according to Dr. John Bierk, who edited Grauel's book, that wasn't always the case.

The sole decision making of which authors to include was truthfully left to 1939 university president W.W. Parker, "and sometimes with no apparent reason," said Bierk.

Some of the names were included because they fit. Not that they fit the period, they just fit where the stone mason needed to place them.

"At one time the stone mason was supposed to have said he needed a name with only three letters," said Bierk. Poe, of course, fit the bill.

The discussions into the merits of the selected names will continue after each day's presentation. Contact Strauss at 651-5157 ext. 5157 for further information.