Venturing further into texts beyond the written

Some of us, at least, are beginning to explore the possibilities that lie with non-traditional texts, and the Literature course has opened the door with “New Textualities.”  Some of these are pretty exotic, non-linear, and puzzling, challenging to the conventional way of seeing texts.  One that I discovered through Theo Chiotis and the OCC is Steve Tomasula’s TOC.

I would encourage you to at least look at the short vimeo clip at this link, and see what you think.  I was taken by the interesting and accessible intersection of visuals, voice and music, more so than some I have looked at.

[youtuber vimeo=’https://vimeo.com/15983849′]

Here’s Amazon’s summary:

Steve Tomasula is the author of the novels The Book of Portraiture (FC2); IN & OZ (University of Chicago Press); VAS: An Opera in Flatland (University of Chicago Press), an acclaimed novel of the biotech revolution; and most recently, TOC: A New-Media Novel (FC2/University of Alabama Press).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.’ 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. His short fiction has been published widely.