"Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory" is about choosing what you want to be when you grow up, and finding out you still have to wait tables on the weekends. The story follows one year in the life of an adjunct instructor who takes on side jobs as an ice cream man, stand-up comedian, haunted house character, and Billy Graham Crusader. With college enrolment and tuition costs at record highs, universities are staffing their courses with part-time instructors who commute between different schools to make a living. Big Wheel follows one year in the life of an adjunct instructor who takes on side jobs as an ice cream man, stand-up comedian, haunted house character, and Billy Graham Crusader. The jobs begin out of financial necessity, but become more of a diversion from a teaching career that Hess fears he is starting to take far more seriously than this employers are taking him.
Mickey Hess taught part-time for several universities in Kentucky and Indiana before moving to his current position as Assistant Professor of English at Rider University. His writing has appeared in Ninth Letter, Punk Planet, and Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's, Humor Category. He lives in Philadelphia.
"Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory is an absolute winner, exploring the difficulties and trials of finding a job, facing a lifetime of work, and searching for meaning somewhere within that work. Mickey Hess writes with truthful insights and rip-roaring hilarity. The fact that it is non-fiction only makes the book that much more important and engaging." -- Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned
"Mickey Hess has taken his experiences as a struggling writing instructor and made them into a wry, picaresque novel. Thoroughly humorous." -- Cleveland Plain-Dealer
"Underground publishing advocate Mickey Hess uses deadpan humour and pungent observations to describe the price he pays for pursuing a passion -- teach college students how to write." -- Chicago Reader, which awarded Big Wheel "Critics Choice"
"Mickey Hess is a passionate, funny man who loves to teach writing to his students, encouraging creativity with sometimes very unconventional ideas (playing basketball with baby doll heads comes to mind)." -- Christopher Taylor, Boxcar Books
"Mickey Hess' story of a year in the life of an English instructor brings to mind Whitman's celebration of himself as an observer and mirror image of life's parade in "Song of Myself". He takes on varied odd jobs -- ice cream man; improv comedian; volunteer at a Billy Graham Crusade Revival -- for both the money and what he finds to be a requirement of teaching: experience." -- Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labour
"Mickey Hess makes you want to move to Kentucky and hang out and write poetry for the rest of your life." -- David Amram, author of Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac
