Big Lonesome: Absurdist Debut Short Stories Reinventing Cowboys and the American West

by Joseph Scapellato

An inventive, ranging debut story collection from a writer hailed by Charles Yu as "a stunningly original voice—warm, bleak, dark, ecstatic, full of silences and power and life"

Reinventing a great American tradition through an absurdist, discerning eye, Joseph Scapellato uses these twenty-five stories to conjure worlds, themes, and characters who are at once unquestionably familiar and undeniably strange.  Big Lonesome  navigates through the American West—from the Old West to the modern-day West to the Midwest, from cowboys to mythical creatures to everything in between—exploring place, myth, masculinity, and what it means to be whole or to be broken. 
Though he works in the tradition of George Saunders and Patrick deWitt—writing subversive, surreal, and affecting stories that unveil the surprising inner lives of ordinary people and the mythic dimensions of our everyday lives—"Scapellato’s  Big Lonesome  is unlike anything else you’ve ever read" (Robert Boswell).

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2017

About the author

Joseph Scapellato is the author of the story collection BIG LONESOME (2017) and the novel THE MADE-UP MAN (2019).

His work appears in North American Review, Kenyon Review Online, Post Road, Unsaid, and other magazines, and has been anthologized in Gigantic Books' Gigantic Worlds and &NOW's Best Innovative Writing.

Joseph teaches as an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at Bucknell University and lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, daughter, and dog.

Reviews

[William Hoffacker · Rating 5 out of 5]

You are probably moving through your life subconsciously thinking, "I get how language goes. I know its rhythms and patterns. Subject, verb, object, repeat. Right?" And, for the most part, the world confirms your implicit biases, and when they're challenged, you can usually blame errors made out of carelessness or ignorance. But every once in a while, a unique text arranges words in such an unfamiliar way that language feels fresh and fun again. Most often this feeling comes from reading poetry (wherein one expects breaks from traditional forms), so when it's found in prose you know you've discovered an exceptional author. That is my experience reading the works of Joseph Scapellato. For a writer like me, his voice is a wake-up call that I've been writing sentences without crafting them, that I've been relying on cliches like "wake-up call" rather than striving to invent something new. His sense of humor touches each piece in this collection, yet every story is tragic with sympathetic characters to match. Scapellato's worlds are fanciful yet grounded. Plus: cowboys. In Big Lonesome's language there is an infectious sense of play that inspires me to read and write and ride and smile and pick my own words so that they might surprise.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

this guy is a writer's writer (of depressing cowboy fairytale prose poetry)

[Dylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

"They never said much, just sat there on their bedrolls trying not to look too lonesome, their faces crossed with firelight, their jaws working jerky and tobacco and fingernails and knives. Who knew what was worked in their hearts."

[Caryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not one who really gravitates to shorts I didn't have high expectations, but I was immediately hooked. In all candor, being from Chicago I was most interested in the contemporary Chicago pieces so that's where I started reading and that was the writing I most responded to, more so than the Old West pieces. Funny and dark and moody, with sentences and characeterizations that put out so much with so little, this is an original voice I look forward to hearing more from.

[Melissa Goodrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Scapellato is, I think, secretly a poet.


His prose is tumbleweeds and fanfare, philosophic and prophetic and candid. He is a master of the quite-short-story, and it was just as pleasurable plunging into the longer pieces. Big Lonesome is concerned with lonesomeness, but also justice, and also jealousy, and also forgiveness, and also homeplace, and also death, and also love.

[Delaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m usually quite put off by second person but the stories in this volume that are in second person probably handle it better than any other attempt i’ve read. The jarring changes in style from one story to the next are the only reason I’m knocking off a star; it could probably have been sequenced more gracefully.

[LR Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not even halfway done with this book and I’ve lost count of how many times some brilliant line makes me stare off the page and go, “Fuck, that was good.”

If this wasn’t a library book, it would be full of highlights and underlines. So odd. So enjoyable. Read it and be forever displaced.

[Eilleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What a collection of stories and what a take on .....everything! Real life described through surreal writing. Wew! Truly talented and rich writing.

[Rach · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Anna Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird & good. Skeptical of how quickly a rattle snake bite kills you though

[Jon Doyle]

"Here, times gone are both something to escape and retreat into, to remember and forget, questions and answers and warnings all rolled into one. They come with lessons we’d do well to learn, expectations we’d do well to ignore. Ultimately, Big Lonesome paints the past as something that can destroy us, and as something that could save our souls."

See the full review here: http://varioussmallflames.co.uk/2017/...

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Postmodern cowboy stories told in short prose. Recommended if you liked Tom Robbins.