Ben East Books

Tag: prose

  • A Tic Is Not A Style

    A Tic Is Not A Style

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    by

    Ben East
    in

    I don’t know what it is, but I’ve observed a natural tic in my writing lately. I wish I could call it a style, but it isn’t. It isn’t something pretty. It’s a tic. If I had a tendency to do something that made my writing stand out—Raymond Carver, T.C. Boyle, Zora Neale Hurston—it would be…

  • Review: The Brothers Connolly

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    by

    Ben East
    in ,

    Ted Prokash employs a rich, poetic voice to tell his story of middle America, giving The Brothers Connolly the quality of an epic. His narrator breaks this novel free of its small-town confines. The writing, here, is the main event. Prokash is skillful and convincing in his portrayal of life in Napawaupee, Wisconsin. He renders with equal…

  • Cheney: still wrong after all these years

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    by

    Ben East
    in

    Former veep, elegantly cloaked in fiction Crediting Dick Cheney for his rebuke of Donald Trump’s bigotry gets no traction with me. Sorry Dick: you can’t make up for decades of reckless decisions and bad policy based on one easy moment of obvious decency. You’re still a modern architect of the very party now on the verge of nominating a racist…