Real Gone

A road-trip book from Artspace Books' artist-and-writer series, Real Gone (San Francisco, 1993) pairs twenty-one colour photographs by Jack Pierson (b. 1960) with a short work of fiction by the novelist Jim Lewis about a drive from Hollywood to Las Vegas.

The publisher calls it the tale of a crazy road trip. Lewis writes the story as a letter. Two travellers leave Hollywood, cross paths with an ex-lawyer named Hoyt and a run of oddballs, and end up arrested for driving a stolen car. The Library of Congress files the book as fiction, under Las Vegas and city and town life. It is a small hardcover, 6 by 8 inches, in photo-illustrated boards with no dust jacket as issued. This copy is the first edition, first printing.

Pierson, born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, works across photography, drawing, sculpture and word sculptures built from letters salvaged from marquees and Las Vegas casinos. The Irish Museum of Modern Art gave him a retrospective in 2008. Lewis (b. 1963) published his first novel, Sister, the same year as this book. The library also holds Pierson's Tomorrow's Man 1 to 6, The Hungry Years, Jesus and Nazimova, Andre, Array (Miami Beach), It's Not Dark Yet and the Photology monograph.