Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow

Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow | Zak Smith | like looking at the Grand Canyon for the first time

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	Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow Zak Smith Tin House Books, 2006 - 784 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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 Königstiger 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.

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And If You Think The Book Is Great....

If you live anywhere near Minneapolis get yourself over to the Walker Art Center, where every single one of Zak Smith's drawings/paintings/sculptures (yes, some are three dimensional) for this project are displayed on one wall. (All are in the permanent collection of the Walker.) How do I know it's all 750+ artworks? Because I counted. 45 columns by 17 rows. You could spend hours staring at them and not exhaust this monumental project. I'm not sure how long they'll remain on display so don't put it off.

like looking at the Grand Canyon for the first time

I just saw the Zak Smith exhibit at the Walker Art Center in Minn. where I had gone to see the "Picasso in America". But this Gravity's Rainbow page-by-page is, by far, the reason to go to the Walker right now. Mindboggling. Buy the book and picture each page lined up like a grid covering an entire wall. The Pynchon book is quite challenging to read so try to imagine Zak Smith capturing the concept of each and every page with a drawing or picture. Number 404 looks like an inch thick melted white plastic mess--does anyone know what happened in the book on this page? I noticed that one of the "tags" for this product is "genius." Believe it.

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Buy it...

Zak Smith a genious, and this book the best.
if you like concept ilustration, you'll love it...

and the prize it's great!

What a Great Artist.

I'm totally blown away by this book, after seeing these drawings at the Walker I had to own it. Check out his website to see all the drawings on line.

"There's all these cool kinds of pictures!"

My two sons (Zachary and Alexander) have been saving their allowance and doing extra chores to save money for a Nintendo DS (they save half, my wife & I pay half). This has been a huge deal for them because they each really want one.

Yesterday, my wife took the boys to a bookstore, and 7 1/2 year old Zach saw Zak Smith's book based on Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow". He could not, would not put it down; he was mesmerized. He's not one to want, want, want, but this, he had to have. He looked at various and sundry art-related books for at least a half hour, and kept coming back to this book. Which was $40. After much discussion and pondering, Zach was resolute: My wife had a $16 credit at the store which she let him use and he kicked in $20 of his $27 to get the book. The point is, he gave up his Gameboy money for an art book. A big deal. He said "You know how interested I am in art, Mom!"

I've read a bit of Pynchon ("Vineland") but when I've leafed through "Granvity's Rainbow" in the past, I've thought it challenging, circular, dense. Very much like, though not so much as, the uber-interpretive "Finegan's Wake" by James Joyce (referenced, coincidentally, by Zak Smith's book). So at once I was impressed; thumbing through Zach's Zak book, even more so. It IS mesmerizing; page after page of fascinating, provoking, stirring beauty. You can get lost in there.

Not only do I now have a renewed vigor to tackle "Gravity's Rainbow", but am inspired to have (with Zach's permission) Zak Smith's profoundly astonishing book along for the cerebral roller coaster, a benevolent guide to provide dazzling clues as I navigate the former's intellectually demanding jungle.

Whether $26.37 or $39.95, worth every penny...

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reviews: page 1, 2

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