Ben East Books

Tag: Fiction

  • What is the WOT

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    Ben East
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    Three novelists offer their views of Two Pumps for the Body Man, a satire about life on the front line of the War on Terror. …the pace is fast… Two Pumps is a page-turner, baby, and it takes some real balls to satirize the great Christian crusade of our times. …a wry ode to the cluster-f*** of…

  • Broadcasting the Poetry of Horror

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    Ben East
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    Review–Gateways to Abomination A parade of horrors files past in Matthew Bartlett’s Gateways to Abomination, accompanied by the strains of an otherworldly broadcast. The discord awakens both terror and fascination, makes our eyes pop even as we struggle to look away. The writing—poetic, detailed, traumatizing—gives lift to hairs we didn’t know we had at the back of…

  • Mission Accomplished

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    Ben East
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    War Novels for the War on Terror Thirteen years ago Sunday former President George Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Over his head a massive banner proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.” What followed this publicity stunt—he arrived on an aircraft carrier off the coast of California riding in a Navy jet—were years of insurgency…

  • Nice Bump for Two Pumps

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    Ben East
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    Robert Bruce Cormack penned a few kind thoughts on Two Pumps for the Body Man. Read more about his hilarious satire You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive). Ben East has created a wonderfully wacky consular bash in a place called The Kingdom, a nightmarish place straight out of Catch-22 where bureaucrats…

  • The Well-Dressed Reader

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    Ben East
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    Contrary to the rumors being spread by Amazon, no Ben East apparel is currently available at the B.A. East author page. Sorry to disappoint loyal readers. http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00N1YVQOG

  • A Catch-22 for Diplomacy

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    Ben East
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    Two Pumps for the Body Man Set in Saudi Arabia, Two Pumps does for American diplomacy and the War on Terror what Catch-22 did for military logic during the Second World War: The enemy can’t kill us if our institutions kill us first. Jeff Mutton walks the diplomatic beat protecting American officials in Saudi Arabia.…

  • baseball and birthdays

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    Ben East
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    Back in January my son asked me to write him a story for his birthday. Three months later I’ve put the finishing touches on a 32k-word novel, my first in the lit-for-kids line. Vikram turns 8 next week. Among the themes (friendship, family, dreams) is baseball. With MLB opening day upon us, I thought I’d share a chapter.…

  • Coming Very Soon

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    Ben East
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    The Second World War II had Catch 22. The Global War on Terror will have:

  • Infidelities for Valentine’s Day

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    Ben East
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    It’s just like Michael Hemmingson to be gone. Just when I wanted to thank him for his black Valentine’s Day messages. There’s a world of hurt in his collection Pictures of Houses with Water Damage (Black Lawrence Press, 2010). It’s a numbed kind of hurt, the kind of pain felt after a breakup, whether you wanted to…

  • Review: Foreign Service Fiction

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    Ben East
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    Anyone who thinks diplomacy is about choosing the right fork at the right time should think again and read James O’Callaghan’s clever satire No Circuses (Tacchino Press, 2015). Forget preconceived notions of dinner-party diplomacy: keeping one’s elbows off the table, tangoing the rival into submission, and writing it up the next day in communiqués to DC. What diplomacy’s really about, in O’Callaghan’s world,…