The Workings of Space in Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland
Abstract
This article investigates the workings of space in Steve
Tomasula’s first novel VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002). As an
experimental novel, VAS makes use of space on different levels. The
first one is the spatial form, which informs the structure of the novel.
Rather than following a linear narration, VAS employs a wide range
of sources and topics and incorporates them within its fictional world
with the use of hypertext. The narrative space of the novel, which is
the fictional space where the characters of the novel are dwelling in,
is America in an unidentified future time. In this place, the human
body becomes a site on which different discourses such as history,
genealogy, and medicine interact. Finally, the spatial design of the
novel presents not only verbal text but also images, graphics, pictures,
charts that all help the book mimic the human body, and thus bring
the physicality of the book to the front. The interaction of these three
levels of space exhibits that as an example of experimental fiction VAS
uses the space of the novel in such a way to reflect the tenets and
answer the needs of the digital age.
Keywords
VAS: An Opera in Flatland, Space, Spatial Form, Hypertext, Materiality, VAS: An Opera in Flatland, Space, Spatial Form, Hypertext, Materiality
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