From the Back Cover
"Bookend sets the stage for a new kind of writing." -- Marjorie Perloff
"Joe Amato's passionate, acrobatic, and audacious engagement with the limits of discursiveness aims to repixelate our reception of virtual culture. Like a test pattern coming from just beyond the Gutenberg Galaxy,
Bookend's static is a call for us to readjust our sets." -- Charles Bernstein
"Situated somewhere between the world of print and cyberspace, Amato's
Bookend is an amazing read -- fast, provocative, learned, hypertextual, fun." -- Gail E. Hawisher
"This is a difficult book aware of its joys; a joyful book aware of its difficulties." -- Michael Joyce
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.