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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Visual Art / Books Drawing Moby Dick

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:27 PM

I have recommended this book before, and I will recommend it again. Zak Smith's book Pictures Showing What Happened on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow is an excellent resource, and a weighty work of art. It is exactly what it says it is (the lengthy name is because of a copyright dispute). But Smith's scribbly drawings also make the book into the most fun study guide ever—you could sit at a table and flip through both massive books at the same time. Smith's illustrations illuminate Pynchon's words in startlingly clear ways.

Well, this blogger is now giving Moby Dick the one-drawing-per-page treatment, and I heartily recommend it for the same reason that I recommended Smith's book. It's not the most original idea, obviously, but this meticulous collaboration between artist and long-dead author is fascinating enough to make it worthwhile. The illustration on this post is today's drawing, "Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish"." (page 106.) If you've always wanted to read Moby Dick, maybe you should follow along with this blog. You'll be done in less than 500 days, if he keeps up his page-a-day routine.

Comments (4) RSS

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Have you ever seen/read A Humument, by Tom Phillips? It's fucking spectacular.

Posted by romeoboots on December 17, 2009 at 5:59 PM

Thanks for posting this! What a great idea for us artists that could use a prompt-based idea like this to get us to show up at our art tables. Cheers!

Posted by thanks on December 17, 2009 at 10:00 PM