Great Books at Camp

The slim, cowlicked teacher from St. John's (the college of the 100 classics) opened his Odyssey and called the class to order. His students, sprawled around the library in Service Club No. 3 at Fort George G. Meade, Md., were 24 privates and officers, including a couple of majors. Teacher John O. Neustadt called first on a bulb-nosed little buck private.

"The Odyssey," observed the buck, "is not history; it's pure legend. The history of great battles can be told and retold until all fact is sacrificed for legend." A studious-looking private, first class, took issue. Said he: "It's neither history nor legend; it's just good literature."

"What," prodded Teacher Neustadt, "do you think was Ulysses' philosophy?" . . . "Why do you think Ulysses really wanted to get home?"

Bulb-nose again: "Because home always assumes a degree of exaggerated glamor when you're away from it. You can at least keep your illusions much better if you never go home."

"The Odyssey" another soldier summed up, "is just Homer's embellishment of Ulysses' alibi to his wife for waiting so long to come home after Troy."

So ran the thoroughly uninhibited discussion last week in an experiment by which St. John's College hopes to introduce the Great Books into the education of the U.S. Army. The idea--a weekly seminar on eight classics--belongs to St. John's redhaired, energetic President Stringfellow ("Winkie") Barr, who had already made Great Books the subject of a radio program (Invitation to Learning), an Annapolis Adult School and many civilian study clubs. His selections for Fort Meade: the Odyssey, Plato's Meno, Apology and Crito, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (Books 1, 2 and 7), Hamlet, King Lear, Gulliver's Travels.

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