IN & OZ: A Novel
Authors: Steve Tomasula
The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
60637
Copyright ©
2003
by Steve Tomasula
Interview ©
2012
by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
University of Chicago Press edition
2012
Design by Crispin Presbys
Printed in the United States of America
This edition was made possible in part by support from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame.
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 12345
ISBN
-13: 978-0-226-80744-7 (paper)
ISBN
-10: 0-226-80744-4 (paper)
ISBN
-13: 978-0-226-80745-4 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tomasula, Steve.
In & Oz : a novel / by Steve Tomasula ; followed by an interview with the author by Pawel Frelik.
p. cm.
ISBN
-13: 978-0-226-80744-7 (paperback: alkaline paper)
ISBN
-10: 0-226-80744-4 (paperback: alkaline paper)
I. Title. II. Title: In and Oz. III. Title: In & Oz. IV. Title: InandOz.
PS3620.O5315 2012
813’.6—dc23
2011035123
This paper meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO
Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
&
OZ
a novel by
Steve Tomasula
followed by an interview
with the author by Paweł Frelik
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago & London
also
by Steve Tomasula
VAS: An Opera in Flatland
The Book of Portraiture
TOC: A New-Media Novel
Visit the author’s website at
PREVIOUS
PRAISE
“The author’s signature intelligence, at once quirky, mannered, uncanny, removed, and satiric, continues to manifest itself in spades. . . .
IN & OZ
bears a family resemblance to Orwell’s
Animal Farm
in its political awareness and fabulist inclination, Barthelme’s
Dead Father
in its stylized absurdity and abstract intellect, and Diderot’s
Rameau’s Nephew
in its fusion of cool aesthetic contemplation and fictive techniques.”
—Lance Olsen,
American Book Review
“A strong, funny, moving mix of fable and pared-down poem. . . using strange new perspectives to reveal us to ourselves.”
—Faren Miller,
Locus Magazine
“
IN & OZ
moves like a finely tuned, well-oiled car through the cloudy landscape of whimsical American Letters . . .a novel of ideas and images. . . that would have made H. G. Wells nod with approval and a big fat grin. . .”
—Michael Hemmingson,
Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Not very far in the future, things are a lot like now only more so. . . . The walls of class do not fall, though, in this eccentric but worthy descendant of Huxley’s fatally bittersweet
Brave New World
.”
—Ray Olsen,
Booklist
“Beguilingly winsome, yet with a steel core,
IN & OZ
. . .is simple yet poetic and Tomasula’s narrative tactics. . .render a fabulist romance that’s very touching and amusing. The sheer innovation. . . of this book bespeaks what the small press does best.”
—Paul D. Filippo,
Asimov’s Magazine
VAS: An Opera in Flatland
“A breathtaking inquiry into the artifacts of the human imagination,
VAS: An Opera in Flatland
is sensuous, ferocious, and original.”
—Rikki Ducornet,
Novelist
“Steve Tomasula’s extraordinary ‘novel’—or is it a film script? collage art work? philosophical meditation?—tracks the story of a ‘simple’ event in the life of a 21st century family. But ‘story’ is the wrong word here, for Tomasula’s dissection of post-biological life is about the new interaction of bodies and DNA possibilities. Tomasula’s imagination, his satiric edge, his wildly comic sense of things, combined with Farrell’s inventive page lay-out make reading this ‘Opera in Flatland’ an unforgettable experience.”
—Marjorie Perloff,
Critic
“VAS,
a beautifully vibrant collaboration. . .balances terrifying facts and a desperate humor with an ease worthy of David Markson. . .an experience both disturbing and enlightening, and one for which I am grateful.”
—Adam Jones,
Review of Contemporary Fiction
“With striking visual aplomb,
VAS
casts factoids off the steps of the Temples of the Predetermined into the yet-to-be-written name of errant possibility.”
—Charles Bernstein,
Poet
“
VAS: An Opera in Flatland
is a beguilingly intricate, immaculately crafted labour of love and anyone interested in the future of genetics or writing, or both, should seek it out.”
—Rick Poynor,
Eye
“
VAS
is a welcome and an innovative contribution to the ongoing discussion and debate on biotechnology and the posthuman. . . .”
—Eugene Thacker,
Leonardo
“Bound in a cover made to look like human flesh. . .
VAS: An Opera in Flatland
. . .interweaves myriad forms. . . . The result is a project so stunningly ambitious. . .that the only true disappointment is that it has to end.”
—Emily Pérez,
Gulf Coast Review
“An unforgettably unique reading pleasure and the most visually exhilarating fiction to appear in years.”
—Kassia Fleisher,
American Book Review
The Book of Portraiture
“Brilliant. . .the overarching theme of representation and self-portraiture, from cave art to computer code, gives this novel a historical sweep that is breathtaking. Like Joseph McElroy and Richard Powers, Tomasula can make intellectually engaging fiction out of forbidding (to some of us) topics like recombinant genetics, microbiology, computer technology, and other hard sciences, and utilizes the advantages of graphic design to go places even those gifted writers don’t go. . .Tomasula’s finest creation yet.”
—Steven Moore,
American Book Review
“What Tomasula accomplishes with
The Book of Portraiture
is exactly the resonance between the history in the novel and the history of the novel. . . .Certainly, its concern is with different historical periods, and, certainly it offers itself as a reflection on those periods. But the context of the Spanish Inquisition or 19th century psychopathology is not simply ‘re-created’ through the transparency of narrative prose. Instead. . .Tomasula basically re-defines the novel.”
—Eugene Thacker,
Leonardo
“A grand historical account. . .
The Book of Portraiture
reimagines what the novel, particularly the historical novel, might mean in the digital world, and it does so with verve, gusto, and style.”
—McKenzie Wark,
Bookforum
“
The Book of Portraiture
fuses the pleasure of reading great literature. . .with the pleasure of great philosophy. . .that force a reader to re-examine everything she had read and thought before.”
—Emily Pérez,
American Letters & Commentary
for
Maria
CONTENTS
PAWEŁ FRELIK TALKS WITH STEVE TOMASULA
CHAPTER ONE
The dogs of IN are snarling again, snapping at each other and breaking their teeth against the bars of their pen.
They are mean dogs, dirty and of indeterminate breed but with the color and size of dogs associated with fascism. Their owner, similar in look and temperament, hates dogs. He only keeps them because he also keeps thousands of shiny tools that he needs for his one real passion, working on junk cars, in the garage behind his house, beside the pen he has made of welded rebar where the dogs spend their days fighting and barking and fucking and shitting and running back and forth, irritating themselves and each other until night falls and Mechanic puts them in the garage to protect the tools.
CHAPTER TWO
There are no dogs in OZ. Or rather, there are no real dogs. There are police dogs. And sheep dogs. And drug-sniffing dogs and watchdogs. But there are no car-chasing dogs. No garbage-can-upsetting dogs. No, need it be said, poet dogs. The streets are very clean and traffic moves at the speed of commerce, which is to say, as fast and smooth as a concept car on a victory lap as one woman, a Designer, might have put it, had she been at her drawing board instead of shopping.
Lapdog in hand, she entered one of the bookstores of OZ and immediately felt herself become more serious, informed by tradition, by quality. Being a designer, she was not oblivious to the role that the store itself played in this sense of herself that could be read in the body language of everyone browsing the aisles. Like them, she felt her motions slow to the dignified pace of a curator, or librarian, influenced as they were by the leisurely pace of music that played on a loop—beautiful, egghead music that she would never listen to at home but enjoyed here because it had been mastered somehow to include only the bright tones and none of the darker, pathetic notes usually associated with music of that sort. Greek columns ran up the walls to where portraits of authors looked down from spots that were too high to hold product: portraits of difficult, aesthetic high-wire walkers from the last century as well as contemporary authors of cookbooks, based-on-fact thrillers, and other works that could actually be found in the store—all drawn in the style of engraving associated with the dead presidents on monetary notes so that even non-readers could understand their value.