Jacob Bender's Blog, page 10
July 6, 2015
The Comps Reading Project part 5
I was up in Lake Arrowhead, CA this past weekend for the gf's family reunion. While a merry time was had by all, the combo of 4th of July festivities, Irish jet lag, and 10 hour drives across the Southwest meant that I got far less reading done than the week previous. I still averaged 4 books a week, but only just barely:
Collected Stories, Frank O'Connor [Michael Francis O'Donovan]
No not Flannery, Frank--you know, the other mid-century Irish-Catholic master of the short story who...
Collected Stories, Frank O'Connor [Michael Francis O'Donovan]
No not Flannery, Frank--you know, the other mid-century Irish-Catholic master of the short story who...
June 28, 2015
The Comps Reading Project part 4
I got in more reading than usual this week, thanks to some transatlantic flights to a little place called IRELAND! I presented a paper at University College Cork, before the Society for Irish and Latin American Studies (see guys? Other folks study this too, my Comps Reading list isn't totally insane!)
The trip was way too short (ah shucks, I guess I'll have to revisit), but I did squeeze in a trip to Castle Blarney...
...where I did do the single most touristy thing you can do in Ir...
The trip was way too short (ah shucks, I guess I'll have to revisit), but I did squeeze in a trip to Castle Blarney...
...where I did do the single most touristy thing you can do in Ir...
June 20, 2015
The Comps Reading Project part 3
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien [Brian O'Nolan].
This is a book you experience more than you really understand. I must confess: I have a weakness for books like these--utterly digressional, insane, labyrintine in both prose and structure, everywhere and nowhere at once. Decades before Italo Calvino, several stories are started, abandoned, returned to, intertwined around each other, layered on top of each other. Characters rebel against authors--characters of authors who are...
This is a book you experience more than you really understand. I must confess: I have a weakness for books like these--utterly digressional, insane, labyrintine in both prose and structure, everywhere and nowhere at once. Decades before Italo Calvino, several stories are started, abandoned, returned to, intertwined around each other, layered on top of each other. Characters rebel against authors--characters of authors who are...
On Charleston, South Carolina and Forgiveness
(We bring you this break from our regularly scheduled Comps Reading Project to flush these thoughts out of my system).
Here there was no ambiguity: no conflicting witness accounts, no hackneyed defenses of police over-reaction, no possibility for victim blaming--simply, a deeply racist young man, sporting the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and the Confederacy, entered a historically black church famous for opposing slavery and Jim Crow, sat quietly in their Bible study for an hou...
Here there was no ambiguity: no conflicting witness accounts, no hackneyed defenses of police over-reaction, no possibility for victim blaming--simply, a deeply racist young man, sporting the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and the Confederacy, entered a historically black church famous for opposing slavery and Jim Crow, sat quietly in their Bible study for an hou...
June 13, 2015
The Comps Reading Project part 2
(I calculate that I need to read on average 4 books a week this summer in order to complete my massive reading list for comprehensive exams, and I have enlisted my blog in the cause of keeping me accountable).
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June 5, 2015
The Comps Reading Project part 1
This coming November is my PhD comprehensive exam, the most foreboding part of which is the massive reading list. The list is composed of 2 parts: one part is 70-100 books of novels, poems, plays, and scholarship on a specific historical period--in my case, Irish and Latin-American 20th century literature; the other part is a 30-odd books on another "special topic"--again, in my case, the "canonization" of Transatlantic Anglo-Modernism. I am attempting to read all of the novels an...
June 1, 2015
Adventures in Arguing Opposites
Strange things happen when students are forced to examine their opponents' arguments: sometimes they actually change their minds!
Not often, of course, but just often enough to keep you reasonably optimisitic.
I had required my students this last semester to submit a thesis statement--then flipped it on them, by announcing that their next essay would require them to argue the opposite. "Those who do not understand their opponent's arguments don't fully understand their own," I quoted to t...
Not often, of course, but just often enough to keep you reasonably optimisitic.
I had required my students this last semester to submit a thesis statement--then flipped it on them, by announcing that their next essay would require them to argue the opposite. "Those who do not understand their opponent's arguments don't fully understand their own," I quoted to t...
May 17, 2015
On The End of Course Work
It wasn't until just the last few weeks that it suddenly struck me--this isn't just the end of my PhD course work; this is the end of course work, period. I was not psychologically prepared for that.
For as long as I've been in school, it was always with the assumption that there was more class after. Pre-school was prep for Kindergarten, which was prep for 1st grade, then 2nd, then 3rd, etc and etc. When I graduated High School, amidst all the fanfare and celebration, it was...
For as long as I've been in school, it was always with the assumption that there was more class after. Pre-school was prep for Kindergarten, which was prep for 1st grade, then 2nd, then 3rd, etc and etc. When I graduated High School, amidst all the fanfare and celebration, it was...
May 1, 2015
The Best Beach in Puerto Rico
It's the Guajataca, in Quebradillas, about a 2 hour drive east of San Juan. 
Well, I suppose it depends on what you're looking for. The sorts of folks who like to make lists ranking world beaches clearly prefer their beaches that have soft, white-powder sand surrounding complete calm lagoons or bays of crystal clear water. Now, I like those types of beaches too--and the ferry in Fajardo takes you out to Isla de Culebra, which has one of the best types of those beaches on Earth. 
But...
April 25, 2015
"Chicago" in Chicago: Sufjan Stevens on the Carrie & Lowell Tour on my Birthday
"I fell in love again/All things go, all things go/Drove to Chicago/All things know, all things know..." Every so often, some cosmic coincidences converge in your favor. I had one yesterday, when--on my birthday no less--Sufjan Stevens came to Chicago and performed "Chicago" in Chicago. It rarely gets more serendipitous than that.
So my lover and I fell in love again (all things go, all things go) and drove to Chicago (all things know, all things know). I could not have bette...
