![]() This is because Tomasula is trying to make us aware, of software and hardware both synthetic and genetic, to see as clearly as glassware. Materials and Methods: The word “unawares” (or variations of it) is used a handful of times. VAS begins with the “first pain,” in a comic book bubble, referring to a papercut Square endures, a prelude to the cut to come, born from the hospital form for the euphemistic if not ominous “procedure,” which he then buries beneath his work-in-progress, “the world he’d been writing into existence.” After all, vasectomies are more permanent than one might like to believe, and aren’t so easily reversed, as The Office’s Michael Scott will explain: “When I said that I wanted to have kids, and you said you wanted me to have a vasectomy, what did I do? And then, when you said that you might want to have kids, and I wasn’t so sure, who had the vasectomy reversed? And then when you said you definitely didn’t want to have kids? Who had it reversed back? Snip, snap! Snip, snap! Snip, snap! I did! You have no idea the physical toll that three vasectomies have on a person!” The prospect of mincing his manhood, “the fear of closure,” is essentially what triggers existential anxiety and a multiplicity of ruminations. Meaning, after all the stress, strain, and stigmata on her body, the misery of muliebrity, it’s time for him to snip his pizzle, a seemingly quick and minor operation in comparison. Hoopsa girly-girl hoopsa!Īfter giving birth once and going through the decision of an abortion, Circle tells Square that it’s his “turn” now. In other words (more precisely, symballs), 8=D~~~V. Tomasula’s Flatland isn’t flat as such, and his borrowed characters, Square, Circle, Oval, are human-shaped despite their names.įather □ + Mother ○ = Daughter ⬭. Abbot’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, published in the late 19 th century and considered a classic of mathematical allegory and philosophy. The ostensible location is borrowed from Edwin A. A novel that’s VASt in its preoccupations even as it stems from the notion of a private de-stemming that is, the question of a VASectomy. Danielewski of course, but also Fiction Collective contemporaries like Lance Olsen and Vanessa Place. There are intimations, though, intimations, literary genes to be traced, essence of DeLillo, of David Foster Wallace, of Mark Z. However, VAS: An Opera in Flatland embodies, em books, those qualities and more like nothing I’ve seen or read before. Introduction: The words “innovative” and “hybrid” are often tossed around willy-nilly. ![]() “…Creation one continuous expression of Divine Letters-Proportions-Harmony-Laws-Spheres without separation, the symmetry of a snail’s shell, of a flower’s bell, of an inner ear, a breaking wave, a moth’s flight or comet’s tail all features of a single face…” ![]() His website is here.Ībstract: “And he marveled at the malleability of the system-people, orchids, amoebas, elk-all cognate.” He lives in the Uptown Neighborhood of Chicago, and in South Bend, where he is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame and teaches in the program for creative writers. He holds a doctorate in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His essays on genetic and body art and literature have been published widely, as have been his short fictions. His writing often crosses visual, as well as written genres, drawing on science and the arts to take up themes of how we represent what we think we know, and how these representations shape our lives. Incorporating narrative forms of all kinds-from comic books, travelogues, journalism or code to Hong Kong action movies or science reports-Tomasula’s writing has been called a “reinvention of the novel,” combining an “attention to society in the tradition of Orwell, attention to language in the tradition of Beckett, and the humor of a Coover or Pynchon.” He is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Once Human: Stories. About Steve Tomasula: Tomasula is the author of the novels The Book of Portraiture, VAS: An Opera in Flatland, an acclaimed novel of the biotech revolution TOC: A New-Media Novel, and IN & OZ. ![]()
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