sabsieg's review
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
adamz24's review
4.0
I feel kinda bad for rating this the same as a Bond book I reread this morning... but I can't go throwing five star ratings around.
gawjushly designed/written imagetext w/real substance and narrative drive; it's not just a gimmicky experiment for the sake of experiment, but a smart, seriously innovative, and funny/sad/interesting take on the novel. I mean, the average New Yorker story is alright, y'know, but fiction seriously needs innovators. And guys like Tomasula and Danielewski are so good at understanding the potential of the novel as a form. Novels are pretty new in the grand scheme of things, but it's like we've already decided they're dead, that pretty much everything that can be done has been done, so you get pretentious crap like 99% of e-lit. But novels like this are around to remind us that novels can be more than just a 'good story' alone, and that we haven't yet even come close to exhausting the form.
Bottom line: it kicks ass. for realz. GREAT ending, too.
gawjushly designed/written imagetext w/real substance and narrative drive; it's not just a gimmicky experiment for the sake of experiment, but a smart, seriously innovative, and funny/sad/interesting take on the novel. I mean, the average New Yorker story is alright, y'know, but fiction seriously needs innovators. And guys like Tomasula and Danielewski are so good at understanding the potential of the novel as a form. Novels are pretty new in the grand scheme of things, but it's like we've already decided they're dead, that pretty much everything that can be done has been done, so you get pretentious crap like 99% of e-lit. But novels like this are around to remind us that novels can be more than just a 'good story' alone, and that we haven't yet even come close to exhausting the form.
Bottom line: it kicks ass. for realz. GREAT ending, too.
george_salis's review against another edition
Abstract: “And he marveled at the malleability of the system—people, orchids, amoebas, elk—all cognate.”
“…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…”
Introduction: The words “innovative” and “hybrid” are often tossed around willy-nilly. However, VAS: An Opera in Flatland embodies, embooks, those qualities and more like nothing I’ve seen or read before. There are intimations, though, intimations, literary genes to be traced, essence of DeLillo, of David Foster Wallace, of Mark Z. Danielewski of course, but also Fiction Collective contemporaries like Lance Olsen and Vanessa Place. 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. The ostensible location is borrowed from Edwin A. Abbot’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, published in the late 19th century and considered a classic of mathematical allegory and philosophy. Tomasula’s Flatland isn’t flat as such, and his borrowed characters, Square, Circle, Oval, are human-shaped despite their names.
Read the full review for free here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/09/16/vas-an-opera-in-flatland-by-steve-tomasula/
I interviewed the author here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/09/01/escaping-the-genescape-an-interview-with-steve-tomasula/
“…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…”
Introduction: The words “innovative” and “hybrid” are often tossed around willy-nilly. However, VAS: An Opera in Flatland embodies, embooks, those qualities and more like nothing I’ve seen or read before. There are intimations, though, intimations, literary genes to be traced, essence of DeLillo, of David Foster Wallace, of Mark Z. Danielewski of course, but also Fiction Collective contemporaries like Lance Olsen and Vanessa Place. 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. The ostensible location is borrowed from Edwin A. Abbot’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, published in the late 19th century and considered a classic of mathematical allegory and philosophy. Tomasula’s Flatland isn’t flat as such, and his borrowed characters, Square, Circle, Oval, are human-shaped despite their names.
Read the full review for free here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/09/16/vas-an-opera-in-flatland-by-steve-tomasula/
I interviewed the author here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/09/01/escaping-the-genescape-an-interview-with-steve-tomasula/
danmacha18's review
2.0
27th book of 2022
I'm not really interested in experimental fiction. The quest to push the novel beyond its known limits seems rather pointless to me, and reading this book confirmed my feelings toward experimental fiction.
The amateur always looks at a piece of abstract experimental art and says with great confidence, "I could do that", and I guess the true value of art lies in the amateur's ability to actually do it. I could not do what Tomasula does in this novel. There are moments that are truly poetic, and it's of no doubt to me that Tomasula put a lot of time and effort into perfecting this novel's minimalism. However, the form was truly confusing. I don't really know exactly what the different strands of narrative were leading towards, and while I could grasp the underlying connections between the strands, it was all too much at times.
I think VAS would be a great text for someone whose mind scatters from place to place, but if you're comfortable with the predictability and consistency of narrative, VAS can be a difficult exercise. And I ultimately didn't really care too much for it.
I'm not really interested in experimental fiction. The quest to push the novel beyond its known limits seems rather pointless to me, and reading this book confirmed my feelings toward experimental fiction.
The amateur always looks at a piece of abstract experimental art and says with great confidence, "I could do that", and I guess the true value of art lies in the amateur's ability to actually do it. I could not do what Tomasula does in this novel. There are moments that are truly poetic, and it's of no doubt to me that Tomasula put a lot of time and effort into perfecting this novel's minimalism. However, the form was truly confusing. I don't really know exactly what the different strands of narrative were leading towards, and while I could grasp the underlying connections between the strands, it was all too much at times.
I think VAS would be a great text for someone whose mind scatters from place to place, but if you're comfortable with the predictability and consistency of narrative, VAS can be a difficult exercise. And I ultimately didn't really care too much for it.
missmeesh's review
4.0
Okay. So when I first picked up this book, I figured I was going to hate it. It looked like an overly complicated monstrosity that would fly over my head, and I would never be able to get through it.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I loved this. It honestly was the most intriguing book that I've had yet to read for this class, and by far my favorite. The historical aspects, small tidbits thrown in here and there, almost in a connected and disjointed way at the same time made me fall in love. It speaks to pieces of history that have always intrigued me, and the history of language that I was surprised I was able to connect to due to my history of the English language class last semester.
It is a piece of art, a novel, and something to puzzle over. I haven't devoured a book like this for class in a very long time. The very fact that I felt like I understood so much of it without having to be walked through it certainly helped. But honestly, it is a stunning work. While not everybody would love it, I feel like with my appreciation for the history aspects that it imbues, the beauty of the language, and the modernity of the text itself, literally embodying itself was unique and quite the ride.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I loved this. It honestly was the most intriguing book that I've had yet to read for this class, and by far my favorite. The historical aspects, small tidbits thrown in here and there, almost in a connected and disjointed way at the same time made me fall in love. It speaks to pieces of history that have always intrigued me, and the history of language that I was surprised I was able to connect to due to my history of the English language class last semester.
It is a piece of art, a novel, and something to puzzle over. I haven't devoured a book like this for class in a very long time. The very fact that I felt like I understood so much of it without having to be walked through it certainly helped. But honestly, it is a stunning work. While not everybody would love it, I feel like with my appreciation for the history aspects that it imbues, the beauty of the language, and the modernity of the text itself, literally embodying itself was unique and quite the ride.
strangeeigenfunction's review
challenging
dark
reflective
3.75
VAS was unlike anything else I have read and usually compelling. It doesn't necessarily tie up the answers to any of the weighty questions it poses, but it draws some surprising connections along the way (The bit about salad dressing and freedom remains poignantly in my head a year later) and ponders the topics with surprising force.
I deducted a quarter of a star from what I might otherwise have rated it because I found the experimental format difficult to read, in the sense that I frequently had to decide what path to take through a page/spread. The text itself is not otherwise difficult, aside from being emotionally heavy.
I deducted a quarter of a star from what I might otherwise have rated it because I found the experimental format difficult to read, in the sense that I frequently had to decide what path to take through a page/spread. The text itself is not otherwise difficult, aside from being emotionally heavy.
Content Warnings
VAS refers to vasectomy, and in the course of pondering rationales for birth control, including in case of disabilities, the Third Reich (i.e. Nazis) , beauty/baby pageants, and iirc the history of eugenics in America all come up. (note that it's been almost a year since I read this so I don't necessarily recall the severity of things and could have missed something)
daviddavidkatzman's review
4.0
An overlooked contemporary experimental ... I call it a "near masterpiece." A marvelous, odd book. It is partly fictional—science-fictional, actually—but quite far from achieving novelhood. It is coherent in terms of content, theme, tone, and design but not in the sense of narrative. Rather it's a collection of brief fictive narrative elements (anywhere from one to five pages) alternated and intertwined with quotes, statistics, and historical anecdotes related to genetics, reproduction, population control/demography, racism, and eugenics. This unusual content is presented in a sophisticated design that I imagine is what a collage would look like if it were made by a DNA-obsessed android. To further complicate matters, the story elements are purportedly set in "Flatland," the world invented by Edwin A. Abbot in his book [b:Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions|433567|Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions|Edwin A. Abbott|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328868256s/433567.jpg|4243538], a brief but highly inventive work that I highly recommend you make a beeline* for if you get a chance. Flatland is Abbot's attempt to invent a world that lives only in two dimensions. All the beings in Flatland are literally one or two dimensional: points, line segments, triangles, circles, quadrilaterals, and so on. The creatures in Flatland find it impossible to imagine three dimensional objects, a form we, of course, take for granted. (Although we really shouldn't...I have heard tell of a holographic theory of universe that says we are all existing on an infinite flat plane (a "brane") and three dimensionality is merely an illusion. But I digress.) Flatland is a great book, but Abbot's Flatland has very little to do with Vas. The characters do not behave in any way as if they live in a two dimensional world...other than metaphorically. It seems to me that what Tomasula has in mind is that the characters in Vas live in Flatland because we live in Flatland. Our perspective on life and society is for the most part "two dimensional." Flat, without history, pushing only forward toward "progress" without concern for the shit (i.e. environmental destruction) we are leaving in our wake. Although Vas primarily focuses on our genetic compulsions, predispositions, and prejudices, Flatland as a metaphor speaks just as readily toward our economic slavery. We are trapped in our way of life, hurtling along toward a vague environmental apocalypse.
Vas is short for "vasectomy." I did not know that before I picked this book up. The skin colored cover could have given me a hint, but no.
The brief narrative elements do feature the same main characters, Square, and a small cast of extras: his wife, Circle, mother-in-law, Mother, and his daughter Oval. This connective thread is mitigated by the lack of throughline between the sequences. Initially, they are mostly about the subtle psychological battle going on between husband and wife wherein she wants him to get the vasectomy asap but he resists out of some mixture of fear and a need for racial identity and heredity. It might be worth touching on Dawkin's [b:The Selfish Gene|61535|The Selfish Gene|Richard Dawkins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366758096s/61535.jpg|1746717] here. Although it's never mentioned explicitly as I recall, it's relevant as Tomasula is highlighting the genetic compulsion to pass our genes on or continue our legacy, which the act of vasectomy stymies. The desire to neuter oneself in our society might instead highlight a survival urge in a different way—the desire to increase our economic security (survival) or out of concern for our physical survival (childbirth). In an interesting way, it does put the individual's survival over the gene's survival thus adding some tension to Dawkin's theory.
The narrative snippets soon diverge from the focus on the husband/wife debate and wander off into odd territory. It would seem that the setting is the far future when humans have the ability to genetically manipulate their bodies and minds to the point of correcting all "defects" and diseases and maintain perpetual life. They become designer bodies essentially. The early sequences are quite grounded and felt like they could occur today. But as they progress, odder and more futuristic references and reflections occur such as the main character dissecting a "Cro Magnon" body in the park. He being from the dominant genetic class that appeared to have Neanderthal genes mixed in with Homo sapiens. While the scenes themselves are rather concrete, the context becomes disassociated and abstract. It's not clear, despite the main character being featured in each scene, that they are intended to be continuous. The character seems to have no history. Which makes sense if you live in Flatland. We have no history or future for that matter. Our genes may want to survive, but unfortunately in geologic terms, a compulsion toward genetic survival is a short-term strategy for a species. It doesn't account for global issues that can lead to extinction. In other words, the Ayn Randian world of selfishness is quite short-sighted if you care about future generations—even just your own (gene)ration.
The non-fictional elements of Vas reminded me of David Markson's The Last Novel in the sense of intertwining short factual, historical snippets with brief fictional bits. The difference here being these fictional interludes were much longer and the factional interludes were focused on issues of genetics and racial identity. But they are both similarly eye-opening. While reading Vas, you will be shocked by how many highly-educated figures from the past supported, and easily justified, eugenics and genocide. They quite sincerely believed that elimination of the poor, blacks, Asian, etc, was better for the evolution of the species. Cull the herd to strengthen the offspring, right? Social Darwinism is still alive and well in many political circles so Vas is quite relevant.
Although shocking at times and abstract and multi-layered, Vas is not depressing or boring. I wouldn't describe it as a "difficult" either. You do need to be focused and don't expect to toss it off. You need to be willing to read columns and jumpy text. You'll have to try multiple approaches to reading the various graphic textual layouts that interweave multiple sentences with each other in vertical strata. But rather than difficult, it's energizing and demonstrates how much potential still remains to be tapped in exploring the form of fiction.
If the book has any weakness that prevents me from calling it a masterpiece, I would say it is drive and momentum. It didn't hit me hard enough and stay with me. But I quite admire what it is.
Highly recommended.
*Beeline. Get it?
Vas is short for "vasectomy." I did not know that before I picked this book up. The skin colored cover could have given me a hint, but no.
The brief narrative elements do feature the same main characters, Square, and a small cast of extras: his wife, Circle, mother-in-law, Mother, and his daughter Oval. This connective thread is mitigated by the lack of throughline between the sequences. Initially, they are mostly about the subtle psychological battle going on between husband and wife wherein she wants him to get the vasectomy asap but he resists out of some mixture of fear and a need for racial identity and heredity. It might be worth touching on Dawkin's [b:The Selfish Gene|61535|The Selfish Gene|Richard Dawkins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366758096s/61535.jpg|1746717] here. Although it's never mentioned explicitly as I recall, it's relevant as Tomasula is highlighting the genetic compulsion to pass our genes on or continue our legacy, which the act of vasectomy stymies. The desire to neuter oneself in our society might instead highlight a survival urge in a different way—the desire to increase our economic security (survival) or out of concern for our physical survival (childbirth). In an interesting way, it does put the individual's survival over the gene's survival thus adding some tension to Dawkin's theory.
The narrative snippets soon diverge from the focus on the husband/wife debate and wander off into odd territory. It would seem that the setting is the far future when humans have the ability to genetically manipulate their bodies and minds to the point of correcting all "defects" and diseases and maintain perpetual life. They become designer bodies essentially. The early sequences are quite grounded and felt like they could occur today. But as they progress, odder and more futuristic references and reflections occur such as the main character dissecting a "Cro Magnon" body in the park. He being from the dominant genetic class that appeared to have Neanderthal genes mixed in with Homo sapiens. While the scenes themselves are rather concrete, the context becomes disassociated and abstract. It's not clear, despite the main character being featured in each scene, that they are intended to be continuous. The character seems to have no history. Which makes sense if you live in Flatland. We have no history or future for that matter. Our genes may want to survive, but unfortunately in geologic terms, a compulsion toward genetic survival is a short-term strategy for a species. It doesn't account for global issues that can lead to extinction. In other words, the Ayn Randian world of selfishness is quite short-sighted if you care about future generations—even just your own (gene)ration.
The non-fictional elements of Vas reminded me of David Markson's The Last Novel in the sense of intertwining short factual, historical snippets with brief fictional bits. The difference here being these fictional interludes were much longer and the factional interludes were focused on issues of genetics and racial identity. But they are both similarly eye-opening. While reading Vas, you will be shocked by how many highly-educated figures from the past supported, and easily justified, eugenics and genocide. They quite sincerely believed that elimination of the poor, blacks, Asian, etc, was better for the evolution of the species. Cull the herd to strengthen the offspring, right? Social Darwinism is still alive and well in many political circles so Vas is quite relevant.
Although shocking at times and abstract and multi-layered, Vas is not depressing or boring. I wouldn't describe it as a "difficult" either. You do need to be focused and don't expect to toss it off. You need to be willing to read columns and jumpy text. You'll have to try multiple approaches to reading the various graphic textual layouts that interweave multiple sentences with each other in vertical strata. But rather than difficult, it's energizing and demonstrates how much potential still remains to be tapped in exploring the form of fiction.
If the book has any weakness that prevents me from calling it a masterpiece, I would say it is drive and momentum. It didn't hit me hard enough and stay with me. But I quite admire what it is.
Highly recommended.
*Beeline. Get it?
reading_again's review
3.0
Very difficult to concentrate on the main story, but it's an interesting read. Certain pages I was glued to, others I really wanted to skip over.