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The Weekly Screed
Why I read fiction by David Benjamin “The alarming flaw in his psychological equipment — although in the American history he would write with his life nothing would appear to be flawed — was that the terrain he viewed and judged and acted upon could have been that of another planet. It had no connection…
Read More...Back home, in the Shinjuku death maze by David Benjamin CHIGASAKI, Japan — On the streets of Tokyo, population 20 million, facing waves of 80-year-old kamikaze bicyclists wearing surgical masks and wielding umbrellas like bayonets, watching with wonder as an office lady in a pencil skirt sprints through traffic on three-inch heels with a stack…
Read More...It’s a holey whole hole and it just – plain – isn’t by David Benjamin “For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” ―…
Read More...Open Sesame by David Benjamin WASHINGTON — I thought it would be tough getting onto the White House grounds until I asked for help from the sneakiest political insider in D.C., an old friend from the Nixon/Agnew days who goes by the name of Kafka. Kafka said, “Hey, no sweat. We’ll just waltz in through…
Read More...The ghost of Bessie Smith by David Benjamin “… Oh, how that boy can open clam/ No one else is can touch my ham/ I can’t do without my kitchen man…” — Bessie Smith, “Kitchen Man” MADISON, Wis. — Picture Bessie Smith, belting out one of her bluesy anthems from the ill-lit corner of a…
Read More...Where have all the soldiers gone… by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — Used to be, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a GI. Well, a former GI. In the bygone halcyon days of universal conscription, every male had to do his hitch, or get really creative to duck Uncle Sam. My dad, who…
Read More...The tortured trees and scary waiters of blvd. St. Germain by David Benjamin PARIS — The Ville de Paris is destroying the evidence. For decades on the boulevard St. Germain, its plucky trees would welcome the spring by putting out new shoots, slender green tendrils reaching hopefully toward the fickle sun. And then, in the…
Read More...“Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood” by David Benjamin “As members of the winning team, Trump supporters have no urgent need to understand the other side.” — Amanda Hess, The New York Times PARIS — Pundits — especially the sensitive, liberal ones — keep telling me how important it is to understand the…
Read More...Jack Palance takes charge by David Benjamin “Net neutrality requires internet services providers to charge equal rates and offer equal speeds for all data usage. Without the policy, a telecommunications company — like Pai’s former employer Verizon — would be allowed to impose blocks on websites at its discretion or allow providers to create so-called…
Read More...The Thing on the Bedside Table by David Benjamin “Life! Life, do you hear me?! Give my creation LIFE!!” — Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein (1974) WASHINGTON D.C. — The beautiful woman with the strangely Oriental eyes, cantilevered cheekbones and subtly protruding lips awoke, as usual, at 4 a.m. and drowsily regarded the thing on…
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