Ben East Books

Tag: Writing

  • Crossing Paths with Paul Theroux in Malawi

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    Ben East
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    I’ve always felt a strong connection to Paul Theroux, due largely to our shared legacy as Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi. When I expressed reluctance about taking an assignment teaching English there in the ’90s, the recruiter suggested I read My Secret History, part of which was inspired by Theroux’s experience teaching English in Malawi in the…

  • Review–The Blind Rooster

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    Ben East
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    Reading Preston Lang’s The Blind Rooster (Crime Wave Press) feels a lot like people-watching at the Laundromat. The major figures resemble coin-op types, people resigned to the vague indignity of paying to have their underwear tumble around in a public washer. And don’t take your eyes off them for a moment—they’d just as soon pinch a quarter…

  • Brilliant Farce Out Tomorrow

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    Ben East
    in

    Highly recommended! You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive) Queue the circus music when Sam, Muller, and Max join Max’s father Otis and mother Ruby in The Rec Room of Sound, Otis’s Internet radio broadcast, to consume pot-laced brownies and interview Bisquick the Mynah bird best known for biting nipples…

  • Review–The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes

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    Ben East
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    In time for Veteran’s Day (also Armistice Day), Atticus Review posted my latest look at today’s literature with David S. Atkinson‘s The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes. What better way to suggest the futility of the human experience than with a card game called Armistice? This game is not War, it is Armistice. Because, as…

  • Dear Bleach Garglers,

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    Ben East
    in

    A number of you have contacted me recently with a strange offer. “I’d drink bleach,” you say, “to get you to read a sample of my book.” Gargling it, injecting it between your toes, I’m astounded at the endless uses of bleach you’ve proposed to procure a book review from me. But far from an…

  • Publicity

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    Ben East
    in

    The New York Times carries this thoughtful piece by Teddy Wayne on writers’ uses of social media to promote their work. Its a reminder of the line between shameless braggadocio and good-faith efforts to put our work before the public eye.