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

Thomas Pynchonâ??s Gravityâ??s Rainbow (1973), set in an alternative-universe version of World War II, has been called a modern Finneganâ??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 readersâ?? 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 itâ??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 birdâ? and “Girgori the octopus.â? Smith has stated his aim to be “as literal as possibleâ? in interpreting Gravityâ??s Rainbow, but his images are as imaginative and powerfully unique as the prose they honor.