Making more from music

Kate Schatz turns PJ Harvey's ground-breaking album from tracks to fiction

By Melody Caraballo
Published: August 26th, 2007 | 11:46pm

PJ Harvey's fierce album Rid of Me inspired thousands of women: the desperate defiance of its title track, the raw emotion inherent in lines such as "I might as well be dead / But I could kill you instead," and the unabashed challenges to male dominance in the genital metaphors of "Man-Size"and "Dry." Even the cover art--a starkly striking black-and-white of a topless Polly Jean whipping her sopping raven hair in a perfect arc--speaks to the stripped-bare exploration of the dark side of human nature and relationships that is this seminal '90s record. For the 33 1/3 series, though, writer Kate Schatz took her inspiration to a whole new level in Rid of Me: A Story . She authored a work of fiction that, as Schatz says, is "not about the album, but because of it."

Continuum's 33 1/3 series provides both its authors and readers to become immersed in the interpretation of a solitary album of equally singular import. The pocket-sized books have contained examinations of full-lengths from Entroducing... to Use Your Illusion and from ABBA to Joy Division. But so far, only three of the nearly 50 published titles have stepped into the genre of fiction.

Schatz's meditation on the 12 harrowing songs of Rid of Me finds her creating two female protagonists, Mary and Katherine, who venture into a thick wood that is both scary and invigorating. At times, the girls seem to be living in a despondent nightmare in their depressed valley town; at other points, Mary and Katherine delve into primitive sexuality and complex empowerment. With its characters blindfolded but searching for the light of freedom, strange but erotic, and hysterical but valid, Rid of Me: A Story approaches the revelatory experience that is its influence as an artistic achievement unto itself.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Rid of Me: A Story (Continuum)

By Kate Schatz

112 pages

List Price: $10.95