Role Models

Role Models

Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich?and happily horrify?readers everywhere.Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities?some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle of the road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis?these are the extreme figures who 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.Review?Waters is a greater National Treasure than 90 percent of the people who are given ?Kennedy Center Honors' each December. Unlike those gray eminences of the show-business establishment, Waters doesn't kowtow to the received wisdom, he flips it the bird . . . [Waters] has the ability to show humanity at its most ridiculous and make that funny rather than repellent. To quote his linear ancestor W.C. Fields: It's a gift.? ?Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post?His acolytes won't need a reviewer's say-so to lap up every word of "Role Models," . . . But dilettantes at liberty to skip around will find a lot to charm them. In a way, the best joke is that - Baader-Meinhof gang, outsider porn and all--Waters can't help revealing one very page that he's both sentimental and good-hearted. Pass the relish, Uncle John.? ?Tom Carson, New York Times Book Review?If Waters began his career by seeking to infuriate, he now has mellowed to a place of gleeful tweaking. ?Role Models' is charming and chatty . . . it also reveals the making of a unique American artist through his influences. When he calls for people to make him a cult leader of filth --having left trash behind for becoming too acceptable--it's hard for any outsider not to want to follow along.? ?Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times?Waters may not be a gloater, but there is a delightful lunatic glee that pulses through the book. It combusts in the final chapter, titled ?Cult Leader,' which exhorts readers to rise up against the ?tyranny of good taste,' wear their belts off center, and infiltrate living cr