ABSTRACT
VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002), written by Steve Tomasula and designed (in collaboration with Tomasula) by Stephen Farrell, 1 is described by the publisher as an ‘imagetext’ novel. As this compound neologism suggests, the novel uses words or text as well as images throughout. As in House of Leaves, concrete poetic designs abound in VAS, and similarly these designs are never used merely for aesthetic or poetic conceit. Rather, they have a central and vital role in the meaning-making of their particular novelistic context. Tomasula's inclusion of images extends well beyond concrete poetry and typographical experimentation. While both of these devices are in use, VAS: An Opera in Flatland is a constantly mutating multimodal artefact. Its visual appearance, typographical layout, and image positioning change frequently, so that as the reader turns the pages, he or she is continually faced with new and remarkable graphic designs. Indeed, the most consistent feature of the novel's design is a single line or series of vertical stencilled lines that run down the page, acting like a margin identifier. Meanwhile, there are sections reminiscent of graphic novels; there are scientific graphs, DNA chains, and family trees; at other times, photographic images, commercial advertisements, and illustrations punctuate the narrative. These multimodal innovations have resulted in the novel being spoken of as defying categorisation (Thacker 2006: 166), as an “unforgettably unique reading experience” (Olsen 2004: 133), and as a “generous and original design experiment [ … ] a beguilingly intricate, immaculately crafted labour of love” (Poynor 2003).
