Vas: An Opera in Flatland

Tomasula, Steve

ISBN 10: 1581770944 / ISBN 13: 9781581770940

Published by Station Hill Press, 2002

About this Item

Book is in very good condition. 370pp with colour illustrations.

Seller Inventory # 012168

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Vas: An Opera in Flatland
• Publisher: Station Hill Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1581770944
• ISBN 13: 9781581770940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Farrell, Stephen
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Tomasula's dissection of post-biological life is about the new interaction of bodies and DNA possibilities. His imagination, satiric edge, and wildly comic sense of things, combined with Stephen Farrell's inventive page lay-out, make reading this 'Opera in Flatland' an unforgettable experience.--Marjorie PerloffMore than a novel with 3-color graphics, almost a film, possibly a meditation, certainly a breathtaking inquiry into the artifacts of the human imagination, VAS is sensuous, ferocious, and original (Rikki Ducornet). When Flatland inhabitants choose to rearrange bodies (animals, plants, even themselves), they enter the double-helix of language and lineage--stories of knowledge, power, history, gender, politics, and self-identity.Steve Tomasula teaches writing at the University of Notre Dame. Stephen Farrell teaches graphic arts at the Art Institute of Chicago.

From the Inside Flap

First pain, then knowledge. It's the turn of the twenty-first century and Square, Oval, and the other inhabitants of Flatland find themselves slipping into a postbiological future where lying down with the scalpel is as common as buying and selling genes. VAS tells the story of one family at this moment in time, looking at what the body has been while imagining what it--and we--might become. Printed in the colors of flesh and blood, this stunning imagetext novel is ultimately the story of finding one's identity within the double helix of language and lineage.
"A beautifully vibrant collaboration, VAS balances terrifying facts and a desperate humor with ease. . . .Reading VAS, I felt pushed a bit higher above our own cultural Flatland, an experience both disturbing and enlightening, and one for which I am grateful."--Review of Contemporary Fiction "This constitutes a leap forward for the genre we call 'novel.' Collapsing nonfiction into fiction, women's reproductive concerns into men's, history into present, work into play--this novel takes juxtaposition and digression to new heights."--American Book Review
"Visually brilliant...VAS: An Opera in Flatland redesigns the novel, taking it to a dimension beyond the one in which it ordinarily lives."--Rain Taxi