Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973), set in an alternative-universe version of World War II, has been called a modern "Finnegan's Wake" for its challenging language, wild anachronisms, hallucinatory happenings, and fever-dream imagery. With "Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow, " artist Zak Smith at once eases and expands readers' experience of the book. A leading exponent of punk-based, DIY art, Smith here presents his most ambitious project to date -- an art book exactly as long as the work it's interpreting: 760 drawings, paintings, photos, and less definable images in 760 pages. Extraordinary tableaux of the detritus of war -- a burned-out Konigstiger tank, a melted machine gun -- coexist alongside such phantasmagoric Pynchon inventions as the "stumbling bird" and "Girgori the octopus." Smith has stated his aim to be "as literal as possible" in interpreting "Gravity's Rainbow, " but his images are as imaginative and powerfully unique as the prose they honor.
