Picture Perfect

[Dave Monroe]

New Statesman
Picture perfect
Sukhdev Sandhu
Published 19 July 2007

Sukhdev Sandhu on graphic revolutionaries and imaginary pop stars

[...]

... in his mind-blowing volume Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated (Tin
House), porn performer Zak Smith is happy to mix the literal with the
surreal whenever and however it suits him. The book renders in graphic
form all 760 pages of Thomas Pynchon's famous 1973 novel, described by
members of that year's Pulitzer Prize jury as "unreadable, turgid,
overwritten and obscene", but which has since then been widely
acclaimed. Smith's style is as diffuse as Pynchon's: employing both
black-and-white and colour, his images move between chemical
abstraction, childlike doodles, graffiti and stencil art and, most
frequently of all, an angular, distorted eroticism that recalls the
work of Egon Schiele. A very special work in its own right, it should
be compulsory for Pynchon obsessives.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200707190047