In a publishing event that combines a Herculean creative effort with extraordinarily good timing, Tin House Books, a Portland, Ore., independent magazine and press, is publishing an unusual 784-page art book featuring a small drawing, painting or illustration based on every page in Thomas Pynchon's literary masterpiece.
Tin House will publish artist Zak Smith's Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated: One Picture for Every Page, in December with an initial printing of 5,000 trade paperbacks priced at $39.95 along with another 500 copies of a limited slipcased hardcover edition for $69.95. Smith will do a number of signings in L.A. and New York, with more to come. "The media is beginning to swarm," says Lee Montgomery, editorial director at Tin House. "We've been talking to the New York Times, Vanity Fair and the L.A. Times—this is a big deal for a small company like us."
Much like Pynchon's acclaimed 1974 novel, Smith's extraordinary visual tribute can seem both too big and too good to be true. The 750 or so hallucinatory drawings that make up the work were originally displayed at the 2004 Whitney Biennial in New York, where they were arranged in a grid to create a massive wall installation. In a phone interview, Smith, a Brooklyn-based visual artist who also performs in the occasional porn film, says he worked on the drawings for nine months. In a tone somewhere between irony and sincerity, Smith described his motivation for creating the work: "Sometimes people forget that when you're a professional artist, you have a lot of time on your hands. You come up with projects like this."
Asked about the book's serendipitous December release date—last week Pynchon's Against the Day, his first novel in 10 years, was published—Montgomery quipped, "Can you believe how smart we are?" Montgomery said Rob Spillman, Tin House Books executive editor, saw Smith's drawings at the Whitney and declared, "We've got to publish this." Montgomery's response at the time: "I told him he was out of his mind. But this project turned out to be just crazy enough for us to do it."
After the Biennial, the original drawings were donated to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where they were carefully scanned to create the book, which was designed by Laura Shaw and printed in China.
Retailers are cautious but clearly interested. Robert Barrett, manager at Hennessey + Ingalls, a noted L.A. art book store, says the store has a "small order. We think it will get media, and we want to see how it will do." He also cited the success of Pictures of Girls, a book of drawings by Smith, published in 2005 by D.A.P. "We sold it really well." At Powell's Books, Jill Owens says she's seen the book: "It really evokes the imagery of the original. It doesn't have a huge potential, but we think it will sell out pretty fast."
Of course the biggest question—what does Thomas Pynchon think of all this?—remains unanswered. Smith says he's e-mailed Pynchon's agent (and wife), Melanie Jackson, but acknowledges that he's never actually communicated with the novelist: "I get the feeling he doesn't really want to say one way or another." Montgomery says there was "no conflict over the book's title" (a title cannot be copyrighted), and the Tin House staff is just as curious about what Pynchon might have to say. "We think he knows about the book. We tried to pull a few literary strings to find out, but we didn't get very far. We got no response."
