From the very weird but vaguely interesting file comes this: In January, a book of 21 essays inspired by Sonic Youth is hits shelves. NOISE: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth isn't in any way about the band, it's just short fiction inspired by them.
"The band's sound is caustic, elemental, nihilistic - and quite unlike any other cult band ever to achieve rock Godhood. In NOISE, twenty-one great literary voices offer short fiction based on or inspired by songs from Sonic Youth - a raucous coupling of music and literature featuring marrow-colored good, severed hands and abandoned babies, Patty Hearst watching the apocalypse on TV and other unruly images of the zeitgeist."
There's an introduction by SY guitarist Lee Ranaldo, then it's on to works by National Book Award finalist Jess Walter and bestseller Mary Gaitskill as well as Emily Maguire and Shelley Jackson, Katherine Dunn and Tom McCarthy.
It's not just Sonic Youth, either, as the as HarperCollins "Fiction inspired by..." series plans a book inspired by The Smiths for Fall 2009, which is sure to delight at least one member of our staff. --Martin Cizmar
