T-Shirts Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow

If, like me, you are fanatical about Gravity’s Rainbow*, then you may already know that a really talented artist named Zak Smith did an illustration depicting, well, what happens on each page of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow.

When I got the book of these great illustrations*, I immediately made a T-shirt of one of my favorite images (the banana breakfast, see GR page 10). So then it occurred to me, I liked all the images so much, I wanted to make a T-shirt of each. And … and … take a picture of me wearing each as a completely pointless project that would occupy 760 days. But not right in a row. That was my original plan (to do it 760 days in a row), and it was frankly a little too ambitious for someone of such monumental slothfulness as myself. And local thrift stores failed to turn up the requisite number of blank shirts. And those dumb iron-on transfer things are kind of expensive. But if I did them in order and took my time …

So today starts with page one. Who knows how long it will take. I hope Zak Smith won’t care. I’m not making any money here and figure there’s no reason why he should care. Besides, he’s probably too busy drawing and painting and making porn films* to worry about it.