Reviews
Benching
With Virgil
by Gad Hollander
"...For those interested in the death
of the novel and its intriguing afterlife as new narrative, Benching
With Virgil by Gad Hollander takes us to the scene of the crime...In
Benching, narrator, writer and reader all surface briefly as autonomous
"characters" in a conventional enough murder mystery plot, although
one senses an abyss of chaos not far behind
them; a mysterious "visitant," conspiratorial "others"
whose words cannot
quite be made out, a "you, " an "us" and a "we"
show up on the same stage
with Laurel, Hardy, Bergson, and Virgil--just as Fredric Jameson said
they
would. Yet the book does have a lead figure in the romantic allegorical
figure of the (feminized) Reader, at times a statue in a park, an angel,
a
murder victim and a handmaid to Mr. Laurel, and most crucially a symbol
of
the traditional literary novel itself, awash in the trappings of leisure...the
writer allows for moments of Jobian epic drama, not sparing the self-mocking
laughter, a bitter assessment sharpened by Hollander's superb ear for
antiquarian literary language. Benching With Virgil is the work
of an author capable of relating the details of a beautiful autopsy all
in the nuances of his language."
--Ruth Now, First Intensity Magazine