:: STEVE TOMASULA::
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Book of Portraiture - Reviews The once-rare moment of creation in art and writing has become ubiquitous in the digital age. 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 —Bookforum Whether questioning the ways we represent ourselves in writing and painting, exploring the act of reconstruction both at a subconscious level and a digital level, or presenting the possibilities of genetic creations, Tomasula’s The Book of Portraiture interweaves art and science, the tangible and the theoretical, in a search to explain human desires and how these desires drive us to create and re-create the human image. —Pop Matters Think of Swift, Groddeck, Lautreamont, and George Carlin conversing together in a large wastebin—up to their chins in 21st century sweepings—and you will begin to have an idea of Tomasula's very funny, very smart and downright scary epic vision. —Rikki Ducornet Tomasula's five interlocking chapters cross continents and centuries and aesthetic sensibilities to build to a dazzling and dizzying whole. The Book of Portraiture is one of those rare books that manage to be at once emotionally and theoretically satisfying. —Brian Evenson Once again, Steve Tomasula has fabricated an incisive and sly commentary on art's way of being in the world, and the manner in which it intersects, and conflicts, with our perceptions. Virtuosic in its execution, and sublime in its discernment, The Book of Portraiture is an able continuation of Tomasula's ongoing project to redraw the boundaries of contemporary fiction. —Christopher Sorrentino 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. —Bookforum ...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.—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...—Leonardo |
