Big Man with a Shovel - Softcover

Amato, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098363260X ISBN 13: 9780983632603

Publisher: Steerage Press, 2011

Synopsis

"If there could ever be anything like The Great American Novel, it might look like Big Man with a Shovel, an achievement that shows just how flexible and surprising the novel can be, and how, in the hands of a poet, it may still be the most incisive means we have for examining who we are as individuals and collectively as a society." Steve Tomasula, author of VAS: An Opera in Flatland "The charm and power of Amato's book is in its mutability. Amato's text moves easily through working-class narration, American folklore, high academic palaver, war narrative, editorial splashback, history and ephemera, in an intelligent, erudite, and passionate novel." Steve Katz, author of Creamy & Delicious A work of highly unconventional literary fiction, Big Man with a Shovel is a modern-day fable in which a powerful laborer befriends a young worker only to find himself pitted against a tyrannical foreman. Set in Upstate New York in 1965, this coming-of-age drama mixes folklore, myth, and metafiction in a story that is by turns playful, suspenseful, and mysterious. Available in paperback and Kindle editions.

About this title

About the Author:

Joe Amato completed his undergraduate degrees in mathematics and mechanical engineering at Syracuse University, and his Master of Arts and doctoral degrees in English at University at Albany. A licensed professional engineer in New York State, he spent seven years in industry working in various project engineering capacities. Amato is the author of nine books: Samuel Taylor's Last Night (novel, Dalkey Archive Press, forthcoming 2012); Big Man with a Shovel (novel, Steerage Press, 2011); Once an Engineer: A Song of the Salt City (memoir, SUNY Press, 2009); Pain Plus Thyme (poetry, Factory School, 2008); Industrial Poetics: Demo Tracks for a Mobile Culture (criticism, University of Iowa Press, 2006); Under Virga (poetry, Chax Press, 2006); Finger Exorcised (poetry, BlazeVOX [books], 2006); Bookend: Anatomies of a Virtual Self (criticism, SUNY Press, 1997); and Symptoms of a Finer Age (poetry, Viet Nam Generation, 1994). With Kass Fleisher, Amato is the author of three award-winning screenplays and, most recently, a full-length play, Fat Jack's. Amato and Fleisher have also adapted Big Man for the screen. Amato currently teaches writing and literature at Illinois State University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Steerage Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 098363260X
• ISBN 13: 9780983632603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176