I basically realized this book was going to be pretty abstract when, on the back cover, it claimed it's "printed in the colors of flesh and blood...". Sure enough, the outer covering is flesh tone, and the inner being a blood red.
Moving on. When I started reading this I found it very amusing. The different texts representing the character's thoughts kept my attention. It's a very abstract book. So I thought I would be able to follow along with the story about Square, Circle, Oval, and Mother, I mean, it seemed pretty easy at first. Then all of a sudden, Tomasula starts throwing out random facts. This really caught me off-guard, as I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about. I assumed there would only be maybe 1-3 pages of these facts and quotes. However, it turned out to be about 20-30 pages. Now, I could relate some of these quotes to the storyline, but most of these facts/ quotes just seemed random. Hopefully they'll tie in somewhere later in the story.
I'm enjoying how Tomasula ties in the human-animal relationship with many of the quotes. He relates humans mostly to ants and primates, on various subjects from ejaculation(compares to gorillas) to our roles in society(compares to ants).
Also, I'm a bit confused on how Circle and Square know each others' shape, when they can only see each other as a line. (34-35) And the question that's really on my mind. How do shapes reproduce? And what do stretch marks on a Circle look like??
Friday, February 8, 2008
Vas?..noVas?..no se..
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3 comments:
I wonder what shape Mother is. It's conceivable that she could be a circle or an oval. She could be an octagon or dodecagon for all we know.
I'm also curious as to how the shapes have sex. What if shapes are meant to symbolize their actual body shapes?
I didn't realize that we were supposed to assume they were actual shapes. I kind of just thought their names reflected the fact that they were just aspects of society. Also the fact that their names were shapes was a way to lesson their individuality and the family of square circle and oval could be any family in America.
That was a pretty funny question at the end. I actually was wondering the same thing about the stretch marks. I thought maybe it would look like a rubber band instead of a perfect circle. Like she stretched and then came back into place. Also, I know what you mean about the distractions all those comments create. I can't easily read about how monkeys and apes ejaculate and then continue to read about a circle and a square. I liked your blog it was pretty funny!
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