Toc

This media was mind warping. I installed it into my computer and then listened to the tales, both linear and non. An excellent story.

One of the coolest projects I have witnessed. This is how I want to experience more novels. This is a wildly innovative and interactive novel. Steve Tomasula is amazing. This piece is outstanding.

From Tomasula's lyrical language and elegant philosophical questions, to compelling audio and Farrell's lush imagery, TOC is an excellent example of what a collaborative, experiential novel can - and should - be. The multimedia structure itself manifests the story's questions regarding time and our relationship to/against it, as the reader-viewer-listener must explore chronology, musical pulse, and visual linearity, in addition to subsequently creating a 4D system out of all of these elements. For example, the Chronos character, pregnant, pondering "the end" while the reader watches the end move nearer - or are we moving toward the end, and can't we delay it, over and over again, by resetting our place in the past? And if my female heart rate is (as I read-watch-listen) indeed 77 beats per minute, then what must I think of the relationship of my pulse to the music I hear while reading - music that is not 77 bpm and is composed by a male. The novel is brilliantly layered with meanings and aesthetic elements. The concept of "vooks" (a silly term created by publishing marketers to replace "hypertext") is not only relatively old by now, but a misstep toward incorporating video/audio interface with text. Michael Joyce used video in Twilight: A Symphony thirteen years ago. Yes, thirteen! What most conventional writers and critics don't understand is the level of concentration and creative processing the reader must perform in order to interconnect the multimedia threads of the story, not only content but form, and how that connection allows the reader to reflect on maneuvering through one's life. It's a joy for those of us who are educated beyond the simplicity of reading novels still mired in the 19th Century form and content, which provide few revelations to the way we do - and must - live now. Young readers who've grown up plugged into online and gaming media, and those of older generations who've made the intellectual effort to plug ourselves in, will have no problem experiencing the fullness of TOC. It is a gorgeous, smart 21st Century classic-to-be.