Bookend sets the stage for a new kind of writing.
The various 'anatomies,' especially the Anatomy of a Heart, allow us to enter the author's consciousness, and yet Bookend remains curiously depersonalized. Amato tells stories, ruminates on poetics, works on his computer, and arranges every page visually as well as verbally. Like a test pattern coming from just beyond the Guttenberg Galaxy, Bookend 's static is a call for us to readjust our sets. The work departs from standard academic discourse but is at the same time astonishing in its breadth. Part poem, part narrative, part academic argument, Amato uses a wide range of contemporary scholarship to inform his thinking.