Author: abendelow
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Memoir Self-reflection: Black and White thinking
As suggested elsewhere, a big part of my family’s culture was centered around the Bible-believing Plymouth Brethren. In the Austin neighborhood, on Leamington Avenue, this group of fundamentalist Christians that included my father’s grandparents established this “Gospel Hall” (photo from 2018) in the 1910s. The congregants of this fellowship ordered their lives by its weekly…
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Memoir Foreword
“Now also when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not; UNTIL I have shown thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to everyone that is to come.” — Psalm 92:13 Statement of purpose There are important questions to consider before writing a memoir, which is always an extraordinary act of egotism.…
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Reflections on three Atwood novels
Having read Handmaid’s Tale and then this spring The Testaments, I decided to read deeper into the novels of Margaret Atwood, and my step-daughter, a huge fan, suggested the following titles as a way into her non-Gilead narratives. I’m very grateful for her suggestions, as you’ll see below. Cat’s Eye (1988) Kunstlerroman of a Canadian woman…
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An empowering Nobel Laureate
One of the joys of Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday has been the proliferation of Youtube performances of songs in the vast Dylan oeuvre by famous and amateur performers across the globe. I’m sure other Nobel literature laureates have inspired their readers (or, if poets, their listeners) to perform the author’s works in response to the award,…
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A new genre for romance? A review of two of Paulo Coelho's books
Coelho, Paulo. By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994) Coelho, Paulo. Hippie. (2018) Pir Vilayat Khan recently commented to me, “Your first Rumi volumes seemed very sexual.” He’s right. There is too much of that energy in the first work with Rumi I did, especially in some of the quatrains. I was…
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Tracking adolescent development in Rowling: Freudian and Jungian growth in Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince
Sam Pull ACP Composition Bendelow 1 May 2018 Tracking adolescent development in Rowling: Freudian and Jungian growth in Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince “Rowling has artfully created a textual looking-glass where young readers can observe their own unconscious conflicts in a displaced and imaginary form, indulge their fantasy lives, and find magical solutions to…
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An acronymic way into poetic analysis: the TPCASTT
My school colleagues are beset by Acronymic formulae to package their pedagogy, and its in that spirit that I devised the TPCASTT (Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Attitude, Shift, Title revisited, Theme) for my kids, using one of my American duos, They Might be Giants: TPCASTT of song lyric Song Title: “Birdhouse in your Soul” (1990) (video…
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A “microessay” for Schilb on “Woodchucks”
Here is a “microessay” done for Professor John Schilb at Indiana University’s Summer seminar, which I’ll be attending next week. It is a brief analysis of the speaker in Maxine Kumin’s poem, “Woodchucks.” First comes the poem, then the analysis. Enjoy: Woodchucks Maxine Kumin, 1925 – 2014 Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.The knockout…
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Tableaux Vivants — an old way of making complex literature new
We tried an ancient technique in English class today, and it worked pretty well. I believe it helped students closely analyze their complex literature (in today’s case, Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). You may know about Tableaux Vivants (“living paintings”) from European History. These entertainments go back at least as far as Valois…
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Blizzard '67 at 16th St.: hot show about a cold night
Get your tickets to 16th Street Theater’s Blizzard ‘67 before it blows out of town in mid February. Staged on the 50th anniversary (Jan. 26, to be exact) of the storm, artist-in-resident Jon Steinhagen play is simultaneously a Chicago History trip, a ribald, all-male jokefest, and a tense human drama reminiscent of Sartre’s No Exit.…
The Wikiness 