In & Oz

IN & OZ is a novel of art, love, auto mechanics, and two places: the actualities of the here and now and the desire for somewhere better. Five men and women an auto designer, photographer, musical composer, poet/sculptor and mechanic find themselves drawn together when they begin to suspect that the thing lacking in their lives might be discovered in the other place. Against the tension between idiosyncratic art and mass-marketed taste, each works to bridge the gulf between IN & OZ by using the medium of their trades: light and darkness; sound and silence. IN & OZ is a story as old as the Tower of Babel and as new as global markets: the story of people trying to reach beyond the limits of language and remake the world, or at least their selves. "In IN & OZ, Steve Tomasula writes as though the English language were his own invention. I'm far from certain he's wrong about this. But if we could still imagine a surrounding in which destiny lay within creatures and stones, or recognized the unconfinements of words, we might know fiction as he does. Next to being wholly new, IN & OZ is the best there is."--R.M. Berry, author of Leonardo's Horse: A Novel and The Dictionary of Modern Anguish: Fictions "With IN & OZ, Tomasula crafts a fiercely intelligent and uncompromising parable on what has become of us."--Alex Shakar, author of The Savage Girl and City in Love: The New York Metamorphoses