ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of collage as a response to twenty-first-century social crises. The term “social” is understood broadly and encompasses the changes induced by the advances in science, technology and the media. The texts under analysis are two early novels of Steve Tomasula – VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002) and The Book of Portraiture (2006). Following a brief introduction to the author and the considered works, the chapter offers a discussion of the novels’ collage properties – concentrating on their layout, typography and use of images – and explores their engagement with crisis. The chapter argues that both novels conceive of their historical moment as being on the brink of a significant and irreversible change, which entails a reconsideration, or redefinition, of certain fundamental notions regarding the human body, ethics, science and capitalism.
