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Start giftingThe Made-Up Man
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Learn moreExistential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project.
Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech’s offer to apartment-sit in Prague―he’d known it was one of Lech’s proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.
Stanley can take it. He can ignore their high jinks, resist being drafted into their evolving, darkening script. As the operation unfolds, it becomes clear there’s more to this performance than he expected; they know more about Stanley’s state of mind than he knows himself. He may be able to step over chalk outlines in the hallway, may be able to turn away from the women acting as his mother or the men performing as his father, but when a man made up to look like Stanley begins to play out his most devastating memory, he won’t be able to stand outside this imitation of his life any longer.
Immediately and wholly immersive, Joseph Scapellato’s debut novel, The Made-Up Man, is a hilarious examination of art’s role in self-knowledge, a sinister send-up of self-deception, and a big-hearted investigation into the cast of characters necessary to help us finally meet ourselves.
Joseph Scapellato published his debut story collection, Big Lonesome, in 2017. He earned his MFA in fiction at New Mexico State University and has been published in Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Post Road, PANK, UNSAID, and other literary magazines. His work has been anthologized in Forty Stories, Gigantic Worlds, and The &NOW AWARDS: The Best Innovative Writing. Scapellato is an assistant professor of English in the creative writing program at Bucknell University. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife, daughter, and dog.
Ramiz Monsef has spent several seasons as a member of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s acting company, and he is the playwright of OSF’s 2013 production The Unfortunates. He has also appeared onstage in New York and in numerous regional productions.
Reviews
“Scapellato’s inventive, hallucinatory prose dazzles…A timely dose of his absurdism could prove an antivenom to our problematic times.”
“Scapellato’s blend of existential noir, absurdist humor, literary fiction, and surreal exploration of performance art merges into something special…The Made-Up Man is a rare novel that is simultaneously smart and entertaining.”
“Scapellato defies genre expectation…The trajectory of redemption suggests Flannery O’Connor at her best.”
“Wholly original…The deviously warped literary noir The Made-Up Man is an unpredictable and thought-provoking tale of deception, love, and identity.”
“Narrator Ramiz Monsef will have listeners laughing through this absurdist depiction of a man named Stanley, whose life turns into performance art. Monsef’s delivery is light, breezy, and quick…This is a quirky listen, but Monsef never loses us along the way.”
“Merging the ludicrous and the melancholic, the odd premise provides many laugh-out-loud moments and some curious insights and enables Stanley to explore and understand why he performs the same role each and every day.”
“Playful, striking, and wholly original, The Made-Up Man is an engrossing mystery of the self, the rare kind of novel that challenges the way we see the world.”
“A mystery, a playful essay on performance art, and a meditation on the instability of selfhood. This is a novel like no other you’ll read this year.”
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