Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973)has been called a modern FinnegansWake for its challenging language,wildanachronisms,hallucinatory happenings,and fever-dream imagery.With Gravity'sRainbow Illustrated:One Picture forEvery Page,artist Zak Smith at onceeases and expands readers'experienceof the twentieth-century classic.Smithhas created more than 750 pages ofdrawings,paintings,and photos--eachderived from a page of Pynchon's novel.Extraordinary tableaux of the detritus ofwar--a burned-out Konigstiger tank,amelted machine gun--coexist alongsidesuch phantasmagoric Pynchon inventionsas the "stumbling bird" and "Grigori theoctopus." Smith has said he aimed tobe "as literal as possible" in interpretingGravity's Rainbow,but his images are asimaginative and powerful as the prosethey honor.

Shown to acclaim at the Whitney Museumin 2004,Zak Smith's Gravity's Rainbowillustrations are in the permanent collectionof Minneapolis's renowned Walker ArtCenter.