RAINBOW COLLECTION

Forget CliffsNotes—what if the great, dense works of modern lit were fully illustrated? (I, for one, would relish a version of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.) But how exactly would that work for a book as convoluted, as visionary, as Thomas Pynchon's 1973 cultfave, Gravity's Rainbow? Don't worry: Zak Smith—the 30-year-old art-world savant, hard-core provocateur, and part-time porno star— has leaped at the challenge. This month, Tin House Books publishes Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated: One Picture for Every Page (a version of which appeared in the 2004 Whitney Biennial), Smith's intricate, mind-bending response to Pynchon's intricate, mind-bending prose—all 760 pages of it. Fans of the novel, rejoice: Pynchon has never been quite so ... well, graphic.

ANDERSON TEPPER