Once an Engineer

Joe Amato is the author of two books of literary criticism and theory, Industrial Poetics: Demo Tracks for a Mobile Culture and Bookend: Anatomies of a Virtual Self; four volumes of poetry, Pain Plus Thyme, Under Virga, Finger Exorcised, and Symptoms of a Finer Age; and a novel, Big Man with a Shovel. He is a native of Syracuse, New York.

"…Once an Engineer is about a world both coming apart and coming together, about the specializations that make communication between groups impossible even as technologies afford greater opportunities for communication." — eveningredness.net"Riveting from beginning to end, Amato's accounting of the small, opportunistic, almost haphazard moments that change the course of one's life is both funny and wise." — Michael Joyce, author of Liam's Going: A Novel"Joe Amato's Once an Engineer is an amazing display of stylistic range: on the one hand, a kind of writing so direct, blunt, and even brutal that it succeeds in the difficult art of erasing itself as art; on the other hand, a writing of high literary self-awareness and sophistication that won't let us forget that there is no exit from writing. In either register, a great pleasure." — Frank Lentricchia, author of The Music of the Inferno

• Part I — Bildung 1. Winter Rat2. Landscaping3. Wicked Piss4. Games People Play5. The Flying Pork Chops and Other Adventures in Craft and Cuisine6 LinkagePart II — Rebuilding 7. Salt City8. Just Produce: A Meditation on Time & Materials, Past & Present9. Primitive Roots10. Say-Cursed Susan B. Anthonies11. Notes toward a Supreme FictionEpilogue: Variable Cloudiness, Chance of Precipitation 50%Acknowledgments