My name is John Friedlander, and I am an associate professor of English here at Southwest Tennessee Community College. Although my schedule varies from semester to semester, I regularly teach courses in composition, literature, and introduction to film. I come originally from California--I was born in San Francisco, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I moved to Memphis in 1971.
My wife and I have been married 29 years, and we have two daughters, one a graduate of the University of Evansville (an aspiring actor), and one a junior at Kenyon College (currently an English major). We also have two dogs, and a wasteland in our backyard to prove it.
As you might expect of an English teacher, I like to read. For escape, I like mystery novels of all kinds (Ruth Rendell, Patricia Highsmith, Walter Mosely and Reginald Hill are among my favorite authors in this field--though BarbaraNeely's Blanche books are becoming favorites, too). I also read more serious stuff. Novels I've particularly enjoyed over the past few years have been Independence Day, by Richard Ford, RL's Dream, by Walter Mosely, Rule of the Bone, by Russell Banks, Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi, and The Good Negress, by A. J. Verdelle. This year I particularly enjoyed The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers. In non-fiction, I really enjoyed both The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker, and a 1980 book about modern physics called The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav.
I've always liked movies. I wasted much of my youth watching weekday movies on television, and Saturday double feature matinees at the local theaters. I got hooked on foreign films through film clubs in college, and still think of Fellini's 8 1/2 as my favorite film. I'm most attracted to foreign and independent films, which provide a less predictable way of seeing than most mainstream Hollywood films offer, but I like Hollywood escapism, too. I'm a sucker for hype, and I followed the crowds to Independence Day and Titanic, and even The Lost World (there's a film I regret seeing--I still can't believe Spielberg let that get out with his name on it). Slightly more recent movies I've enjoyed include American Beauty, Monson Wedding, Bend It Like Beckham, and X-2: X-Men United. So far this year I found myself most moved by Finding Neverland, though I had a lot of fun with Sideways, and admired The Aviator.
I like to cook and to eat. For a while I was the regular restaurant critic for The Memphis Flyer, and I also wrote some restaurant reviews for Memphis magazine. I won a blue ribbon for a loaf of rye bread at the Mid-South Fair one year, and I've got (somewhere) a postcard from Julia Child, thanking me for a recipe I sent her (she's a generous and gracious lady!). I've gotten to the point where I'm satisfied with the bagels I bake, and I am only slightly fixated on keeping my kitchen knives sharp. I do most of the cooking in our home, but not enough of the cleaning up.
I'm a fairly capable writer--in addition to the restaurant reviews I used to write, I also wrote various consumer pieces for Memphis magazine, and was their humor columnist for some time, as well. Still, I'm uncomfortable with the blank page, and try to avoid having to write whenever I can. I offer really sound advice about how to write efficiently and how to overcome reluctance, fear and procrastination; but I don't always follow my own advice. When I was in college, I once put off writing a paper by alphabetizing the garments in my closet and carefully folding all the clothes in my dirty clothes box.
I hate the idea of yard work, and look forward to winter, when everything dies off.