Big Man with a Shovel - Tapa blanda

"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.

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.