Ben East Books

Category: Writing

  • World Book Day

    World Book Day

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    Ben East
    in ,

    On Earth Day I pollute. On World Book Day I watch movies. If I list my favorites, it becomes clear that most actually started out as novels—even Cool Hand Luke (Donn Pearce, ’65) and Midnight Cowboy (James Leo Herlihy, same year). Easy Rider (’69) is the exception.

  • Love and Protest

    Love and Protest

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    Ben East
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    Amy’s Story by Anna Lawton sets a tempestuous romance against the turbulent half-century of global change that erupted in the 1960s and flowed across the land like a modern Great Flood. The novel plants the seeds of these decades in the post-World War One migration from Europe to the United States and reveals the newest fruits—poison…

  • Earth Day for Dummies

    Earth Day for Dummies

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    Ben East
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    What I plan to do for Earth day is drive a gas guzzler up the road tossing hamburger wrappers out the window and blasting Metallica’s “Blackened” ’til Johnny Law hunts me down in his fuel sucking hot rod and hands me a ticket for speeding, littering, and noise pollution. Earth Day? What a scam! We should treat…

  • Literature Only

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    Ben East
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    Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea makes for great reading on a flight home after a trip to Key West. During this vacation Ben East introduced the novel to his oldest son and snorkeled with a shark with his youngest.

  • Miles of Fun, Miles of Files

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    Ben East
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    Paul Panepinto is bored at work. How could he not be? He’s a painter trapped by lapsed policies, cold chocolate in a Federal Funding mug, and long stints of muzak while on hold with Mortgage Depot. Also there are his smarmy daydreams of ‘better times’ with Suzanne Biedertyme to get him through the monotony. Panepinto…

  • Swimming with Sharks

    Swimming with Sharks

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    Ben East
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    My first shark dive, over a decade ago, our group encountered half a dozen reef sharks in the Red Sea. The big monsters circled the coral an hour offshore. The sight stole my breath, my aqualung pumping furiously—not the best reaction at minus 30 ft. The white tip is a predator, though not likely to charge across open water for…

  • Poisonwood

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    Ben East
    in ,

    A nightmare tree grows in the hammock jungle along Route One of Fat Deer Key. Poisonwood. Its touch will boil the skin; its toxin, when burned, will sear the lungs; its berries, if ingested, will sour the gut. At mile 56 the Poisonwood grows alongside its antidote, the Gumbo Limbo. Folk medicine has it the remedy should be…

  • 33 Inches for Kerouac

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    Ben East
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    At CVS today I bought one item. One. Doesn’t matter what. When the purchase was finalized, the cashier handed me the receipt. Guess how long that sucker was. Some of this is necessary, perhaps. Now I know I was served by a person named Reina. Hi Reina. Phone number, store address, price paid plus taxes (the…

  • Murder and the Father of American Diplomacy

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    Ben East
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    We all know Ben Franklin as one of the nation’s earliest Renaissance Men: scientist, printer, writer, businessman, scholar, politician, diplomat. Fireman. In David R. Andresen’s short mystery Murder in a Blue Moon Ben takes a break from his more gentlemanly pursuits, such as chess, to solve a serial murder in Philadelphia. It’s fall of 1752, the American Experiment…

  • House of Cards, Sleight of Hand

    House of Cards, Sleight of Hand

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    Ben East
    in ,

    Think the opening credits for House of Cards is just some anodyne tour around the nation’s capital? Not so. One minute into the 90 second clip the camera pans desolate tracks. It’s night. All is still, the music foreboding. A locomotive blows through timed to a sudden guitar chord—sound and vision merged for a dramatic…