April 2007
33.3 Rid of Me: A Story - Kate Schatz Published August 2007.

Synopsis:
Kate Schatz' Rid of Me is at once a wholly original work of fiction and an innovative meditation on one writer's relationship to an album. The album in question is PJ Harvey's seminal 1993 recording Rid of Me, a release noted again and again for its raw sound, dark lyrics, and unabashed presentation of female sexuality, desire, and rage. In her prologue, Schatz states that the book is "not about Rid of Me, but because of it" and the book's 14 chapters (one for each song on the album) use the lyrics, moods, images, and characters to create something entirely different, yet intimately connected to the music.

Rid of Me tells the story of Kathleen and Mary, two women who find themselves alone in a house in the middle of the dark, forbidden forest that borders their depressed valley town. Amidst a dramatic natural setting, they negotiate their freedom, their pasts, their survival, and each other. Rid of Me is a story of escape and desire, violence and gender, landscape, family, and memory. It's a twisted fairy tale, a queer dystopia/utopia, and a lyrical exploration of kidnapping, dreams, murder, sex, revenge, and love.

Bio:
Kate Schatz is a writer, editor, and teacher whose fiction and essays have been published in Denver Quarterly, West Branch, Bitch!, LTTR, Kitchen Sink Magazine, and BlitheHouse Quarterly, among others. Kate received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and won the John Hawkes Memorial Prize in Fiction and the Francis Mason Harris Prize. She's a co-founder and editor of The Encyclopedia Project, a 5-volume book series that publishes new writing and visual art (http://www.encyclopediaproject.org). She lives in Oakland, CA with her boyfriend, their dog Buzz, and their cat Stevie Nicks. Kate likes weather when it's good, celebrities when they're bad, and California, in general.

I think it's a great idea. It increases the million possibilities of interpretation. And that is good with an artist as Polly, who's always said that there's no freezed and/or autobiographical meaning to her songs.

I see what you mean - but don't you risk freezing meanings when being as direct as the above mentioned book?
Inspirations should be welcome, of course, but I would prefer to find new universes instead...

(I admit it: I didn't even read the synopsis and I hadn't heard about the 33 1/3 book collection).