Noise

A fast-paced comic extravaganza from the pen of the author of the runaway bestseller How Insensitive. Set in the cynical and celebrity-obsessed world of mainstream media, and alternatively in the stultifying conservatism of suburban sprawl, a failed musician and intellectual nerd has become a freelance magazine writer and unwillingly been cast into the role of fashion arbiter. Reluctantly, and only for the money, James Rainer Willing agrees to interview the reclusive nationalist Canadian poet Ludwig Boben for the prestigious American magazine Glitter. Willing's insanely busy and competitive life provides glimpses into the world of fashion photography, small-press poetry readings, expensive and fashionable restaurants (he is a restaurant critic), 'lifestyle' magazines, and a return to the suddenly-quiet life or non-life of ghostly New Munich, Ontario, where Willing revisits his one-time peers, the People Who Stayed Behind.

Russell Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Halifax, Canada. He studied French literature at Queen's, Poitiers and Paris (III). Since 1990 he has lived in Toronto, where he works as a freelance journalist. He has published articles in The Globe and Mail, Details, Travel and Leisure, Toronto Life, Flare, NOW and other journals, and short fiction and poetry in Queen's Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Quarry, the New Quarterly, Carousel, Kairos, Toronto Life and other journals. Russell appears frequently on television and radio as a cultural commentator. In 1995 he won a Gold Medal at the American City And Regional Magazine Awards. Russell Smith is the author of six works of fiction; his first novel, How Insensitive, was short-listed for the Smithbooks/Books In Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. In 2005 he was a juror for the Governor General's Award in Fiction (in English).