Role Models (Hardcover)

Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse and enrich-and happily horrify readers everywhere. Role Models is a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favourite personalities-some famous, some unknown. From the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis-here are the figures who have helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness. Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse and hilarious artistic minds of our time. How did somebody from a quiet Baltimore neighborhood grow up to become the outlandish, brilliant, and insane John Waters? Two words: Johnny Mathis.A" - Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors A delirious descent into Waters World, Role Models is a true-life confessional from one of America's greatest ironists. John Waters is a man always ready and willing to say the unsayable. He is the dark mirror of contemporary culture. From haute couture to low culture, from literary outsiders to lapsed actors, he delivers razor-sharp pen portraits of the women and men who have perverted and inspired him by turns. And yet Waters's warped imagination is always humane, his judgments insightful. Role Models is as much a philosophical manifesto as it is an utterly hilarious and shamelessly entertaining read.A" - Philip Hoare, author of The Whale John Waters has a great gift for appreciation-whether for toothless lesbian strippers in Baltimore or the most rarefied painters and writers of our day. He is a dandy who has done away with everyone else's hierarchies and created a new world that conforms only to his own taste for trash and the sublime. He is frank, funny, and (strangely enough) both sensible and outrageous.A" - Edmund White, author of City Boy