Bennett’s Cow-Eyed Girl

Echoing Aeschylus’s tragedy Prometheus Bound , Damian Westfall’s new novel Bennett’s Cow-Eyed Girl is a meditation on self-destruction, creativity, regret and emotional paralysis. Set during one rainy night in a darkened cramped apartment, Bennett’s Cow-Eyed Girl depicts the story of three characters. Murray Brater, a writer in his mid-fifties who is writing a dictionary of nonexistent words. Dell, Murray’s twentysomething hapless assistant who does nothing but sleep. And Mr. Shreck, an aging novelist with a ten year case of writer’s block, who dreams of writing an English epic in dactylic hexameter. Searching for self-discovery Murray finds nothing but regret. Searching for inspiration, Mr. Shreck finds nothing but plagiarism. Searching for nothing, Dell finds what could be meaning.