Graves opens lecture series with suspense, humor
One of Chadron State’s all-time most revered professors, Dr. Dorset Graves, mixed two of literature’s most intriguing ingredients -- suspense and humor -- into his talk last week at the opening session of a new lecture series named in his honor.
Entitling his presentation in the Reta King Library “The Pleasures of Finding Out,” Graves gave several definitions of “finding out,” most of them focusing on discovery by various means, including “the hard way.”
Based on his reputation as an avid reader and one who has made constant, even non-stop, use of the library during his 32 years as a full-time English professor at Chadron State and an adjunct humanities professor the last 15 years, it was apparent that Graves believes books are a great source for “finding out.”
Quoting from “The Modern Researcher,” Graves said “A library is a sort of ammunition dump of unexploded arguments ready to burst forth the moment a live reader opens a book.”
The speaker added that he has long felt the CSC’s library “is a dangerous place to browse if you’re wary of having your unexamined biases the least bit challenged.” He also stated that he regards a library “as the very heart of the college, where circulation, as with our own bodies, is one of the preconditions of survival.”
Graves had a subtitle for his talk: “Who is John Bannister?”
Most of those in the audience undoubtedly anticipated that John Bannister was a literary figure who had captured Graves’ fancy. He wanted to share the pleasures he’d gained from reading Bannister’s work.
But Graves had a surprise. He explained that Bannister was a farmer whose land joined that of Graves’ grandparents in east central Missouri. Bannister was so enraptured by books that he often spent his time reading rather than tending to his crops and livestock, leading to financial disaster.
When Graves and his brother showed a strong tendency for “always having their noses in a book,” grandpa confided to grandma that the boys “would grow up to be another John Bannister.”
The fears proved groundless, Graves noted. His brother became a successful businessman and he had escaped the fate of John Bannister by becoming a college professor, or as he put it, “by finding out where I could indulge my reading habits without jeopardizing my livelihood.” In other words, in his profession he could read all he wanted, pass on the knowledge he had gained to students and be paid for it.
Graves added an amusing point, “But what books John Bannister actually read, I never had the joy of finding out.”
Graves was introduced by two of his protégés, CSC Language and Literature Professors Dr. Bob McEwen and Dr. Mike Cartwright. Both were Graves’ students at CSC in the 1960s.
McEwen said he has “an undying, life-long gratitude for this man” and continues to have Graves read and correct the punctuation in the poetry he writes.
Cartwright said Graves was his inspiration as he chose a career in teaching literature and called his mentor “a stellar lecturer, ingenious inquisitor and congenial, but demanding, taskmaster.”
In other words, both are grateful to Graves for helping them find out about the joys of language and literature.
The second speaker in the Dorset Graves Lecture Series will be another CSC literature professor, Dr. Kathy Bahr. Her topic will be “The Persistence of Gothic Romance in Contemporary Culture.” The program will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 12 in the lower level of the King Library.
Category: Campus News