According to his contract, the old man has five months to sit on his bench and reminisce about his childhood, but all that comes out are curious stories--about leprous dominos, amorous concrete towers, chaste call girls, and more. In other words: the old man twaddles on and on. A virtuoso novel that reveals what language can do when it serves no purpose but its own proliferation, Swiss provocateur Urs Alleman's "The Old Man and the Bench" is a comedy of mangled verbosity. "Stunning, exquisite, perfect, and difficult... makes literature that pre-dates it seem deprived."--Dennis Cooper Urs Allemann was born in the city of Schlieren, near Zurich, Switzerland, in 1948. From 1986 to 2004 he directed the section of culture and literature of the Swiss journal of Basle (Basler Zeitung). He has published three books of narrative and several works of poetry, including: Fuzzhase (1988), Holder die Polder (2001), sch n, sch n! (2003), and Im Kinde schwirren die Ahnen (2008). He currently lives in Bettingen in Basle. Patrick Greaney is assistant professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder.