Jeff Kahan

Jeff Kahan
For many University professors, their work is less about achieving a livelihood and more about satisfying a hunger to pursue the things that they love. The subjects they teach are their innate interests; they simply get paid to research and teach on the things that would be their hobbies if they held any other job in any other field.

So when Jeffrey Kahan, associate professor of English at ULV, was asked what he likes to do for fun, he responded: “It seems to me that that’s a false question. By and large, most academics don’t do that. Their work is their avocation. What do I do for work? I read Shakespeare. (On vacation), what would I do? I’d probably bring a Shakespeare book with me, sit on the beach and read Shakespeare.

“The blur between work and pleasure, it just doesn’t exist,” Kahan said. This Shakespeare fiend rarely answers questions in a straight-forward manner. Immediately, he sees the question and the many angles by which it could be addressed; he possesses the innate ability to forthwith launch into complicated analyses. And his answers reflect this. He seems to feel as if he’s cheating the question if he doesn’t satisfy his intellect, his mind’s propensity to “think outside the box.”

“The question is,” he said, “what do you do as a stress reliever for what you enjoy doing?”

For Kahan, his past has been a collection of stories moved along by the phrase, “One thing led to another.” The professor, donning the disheveled hair of the cliché struggling writer, is not actually struggling at all. A prolific author – with nine books either out or in press – Kahan said his wife told him he had to pry his face from his laptop. In response, he rekindled an interest in guitar after not playing for 15 years.

“I used to be a fairly formidable musician,” he said.

He started playing around age 18 in his native Canada. He started jamming and playing in clubs and “before you know it, you’re buying a van,” he said.

Eventually, he found himself touring with blues bands throughout Western Europe.

“When you become good at something and you don’t make it a secret,” he said, “one thing leads to another. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

Then, he just stopped.

“I just got sick of it,” he said. “Certain things excite you for part of your life, and then you leave them.”

Now, coming back to the guitar, Kahan feels that his playing ability has matured, even though he hasn’t picked up the instrument since dropping it.
“It’s as if another person is playing guitar,” he said. “I sound different. As your personality evolves, you evolve as a player without practice. You would assume you would evolve as a player with constant practice.”

In addition to picking up the guitar again, Kahan fills time walking his dogs and working out with his wife three times a week, a hobby – working out, not necessarily with his wife – that started back in high school as the short, stocky Canadian was a member of the power-lifting team.

“It was just something to blow off steam,” he said. In addition to lifting, Kahan played football, starting on the defensive line and eventually moving back to safety, as his size didn’t keep up with his ambitions. Naturally, he also played hockey.

“Everybody in Canada plays hockey,” he said.

Kahan’s journey to Southern California and to La Verne is yet another chapter in the one-thing-leads-to-another saga that is Kahan’s life.

While teaching in Hong Kong (He has taught all around the world, including the South of France, St. Petersburg, Beijing, Canada and “virtually every institution in Southern California, with the exception of USC.”), Kahan was asked to present a paper in Beijing. A professor at the University of California, Riverside, liked Kahan’s paper and offered him a job.

“That’s how my career has gone,” he said. “Accidental happenings in meetings have led to jobs, publications, the semblance of, for want of a better term, a career.”

Eventually, he made it to ULV. How? One thing led to another.

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Jeff Kahan

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