The Book
of Portraiture: A Novel
by Steve Tomasula
FC2, Normal/Tallahassee, FL, 2006
327pp. Paper, $17.95
ISBN-10: 1-57366-128-7.
Reviewed by Eugene Thacker
School of Literature, Communication &
Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology. Atlanta,
GA 30332-0165
eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu
As a form of fictional writing, the historical
novel has always struck me as incredibly
boring. I recall, as a student, having
to slog through Dickens or Scott, all
the while wondering why I didnt
just go and actually read a history book.
In other words, it was the "historical"
part of the historical novel that proved
troubling for me.
The inverse of the historical novel is,
as Frederic Jameson reminds us, science
fiction. Now, science fiction is something
Ive always liked Im
more willing to give a pulpish, Cold War-era
SF novel about mutant plants that attack
human civilization a chance that I would
a historical novel (Wyndhams The
Day of the Triffids, if youre
wondering).
I wont claim that this is the case
for most people; arguably, both the historical
novel and science fiction have always
had small, "geeky" audiences.
And, indeed, part of the pleasure of each
of these kinds of writing is in their
engrossing details historical accuracy
in the former, futuristic accuracy in
the latter. A concern with progress is
often the domain of historical novel,
whereas the imagining of utopia is often
the domain of science fiction. But science
fiction also has its own history, what
Jameson calls a "future history."
Every vision of the future is conditioned
by and is indicative of the historical,
political, social, and economic moment
in which that future is imagined. Put
simply, every future has a past, just
as every past articulates its own version
of the future, often through the ideological
lens of progress.
What would it mean to write a novel about
this relationship between the historical
novel (the past) and science fiction (the
future)? In a sense, Steve Tomasulas
novel The Book of Portraiture is
an answer to this question. The book stitches
together different narrative threads,
all of which are, in a way, consumed by
the idea of portraiture and the face,
language, and the desire for alterity.
A desert nomad in ancient Egypt, the 17th
century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez
(whose famous Las Meninas is itself
a book of portraiture), a male psychiatrist
treating a female patient for sexual neuroses
in the early 20th century,
and a post-9/11 hacker, a drug store manager,
a Muslim husband caring for his sick wife,
and a geneticist with an interest in art,
are just some of the voices that constitute
Tomasulas thoughtful, innovative,
and often humorous study of the vicissitudes
of language.
Which brings us to another aspect of The
Book of Portraiture worth mentioning.
If, indeed, there is an overlap between
the historical novel and science fiction,
does this follow for their form
as well? Historical novels are often quite
epic, elaborating in great detail all
the aspects of a given period in time
a "real" place through
which fictional characters move. Interestingly
enough, science fiction novels often do
the same, especially in the works of the
great dystopian authors of the 20th
century (Huxley, Orwell, Burgess).
But neither the historical novel nor science
fiction actually enframe their own status
as writing. The historical novels of the
19th century, for instance,
presume the literary conventions of the
time, as do the science fictional dystopias
of the 20th century. While
the historical or futuristic datum in
the novels are presented in elaborate
detail, little attention is paid to the
historical or futuristic aspects of
the novel itself. A truly historical novel
would, in this case, actually be written
in the style of the period - likewise
for science fiction.
What Tomasula accomplishes with The
Book of Portraiture is exactly this
resonance between the history in the novel
and the history of the novel. Tomasula
has already done this for science fiction
in his earlier novel, VAS: An Opera
in Flatland. What VAS does
for the genre of science fiction, The
Book of Portraiture does for the historical
novel.
But in doing this, The Book of Portraiture
does more than simply mime narrative style.
In a sense, to say that The Book of
Portraiture references the historical
novel is not entirely accurate. 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 assembles, cites, appropriates,
and collates heterogeneous documents of
the past. Historical documents, scientific
articles, travelogues, diaries, advertisements,
and familiar narrative prose all constitute
part of the historical settings of The
Book of Portraiture.
One does not so much read this book as
one sorts, sifts, and wanders through
it. There is no unmediated, transparent
telling of a story here every telling
requires an appropriate form, in which
what is told is rendered as both contingent
and artificial. I think this is a worthwhile
endeavor, especially as many publishing
houses continue to create expectations
for standardized, novelistic forms. Tomasula
basically re-defines the novel as less
a narrative and more a dossier.
If VAS conceived of science fiction
as a biotechnological field of data, lineage,
and memory, then The Book of Portraiture
conceives of the historical novel as a
dossier of discarded and preserved artifacts.