The Good: Very funny, Great narrative voice
The Bad: Something of an acquired taste, Opens with a lot of namedropping.
The Basics: John Waters beautifully exposes the outsiders in the United States in Role Models, his latest book which is overall an intriguing anthology of character explorations.
A few months back, my wife and I were up late watching - of all things - Jimmy Kimmel Live, which we had been catching more and more since his hilarious post-Oscars episode. John Waters was on plugging his book Role Models and my wife was getting a kick out of him, while asking every few minutes "Who is this guy?!" I knew of John Waters, more than having any familiarity with his work. Indeed, the most I had seen of any of his movies had been snippets from the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. But, I enjoyed the snippets and the interview and for an anniversary afterward (due in no small part to the local Borders getting closed down and discounting everything drastically), my wife presented me with a copy of Role Models.
How this book hung around long enough to be discounted 75% with a store closing (not a Stephen King book in sight, what the hell?!) is a mystery to me, though the experience my wife and I had with it might be part of the reason. Role Models is a collection of character studies and each chapter has a different focus, told through the distinct voice of John Waters, and the opening of the book might seem like a lot of namedropping. My wife started reading Role Models aloud to me as I drove her around - too bad she didn't make it to the later chapters on Marine porn and Zorro the stripper! - but she became very frustrated reading the references to people she was unfamiliar with. Opening with Johnny Mathis, whose work neither she nor I were familiar with, Role Models became a painfully convoluted series of namedrops that distracted from many of the points Waters was trying to make. So, for example, after asking Johnny Mathis who his role model was, Mathis responds "Lena Horne" (10). The question and answer are literally a single line on page ten, with a one line follow-up. What follows that is not any sort of reflection on Mathis or his answer, but rather an eighteen line digression on Waters's thoughts on Margaret Hamilton. Reading John Waters' namedropping tangents is like wrestling with the perspective issues from the narrative technique of Thomas Pynchon (V is reviewed here!).
But, I soldiered through on my own and having finished Role Models, I think I am feeling exactly like John Waters wanted me (and other readers to feel). I feel like my life has been underlived and somewhat pointless. After all, I've written novels - two of which have been published -, have the first ten episodes of a one hundred episode television series written, and I've met a crapton of celebrities, but usually in the hustle and bustle of a convention atmosphere. I've done nothing. My life has been waiting for the opportunities, the pop, which Waters writes about on virtually every page. He writes about artists who have created undying works, dangerous pornogaphers who have made half a million dollars selling outsider erotica in a single year and stippers who inspire thirteen full pages! They are all original, interesting and had their own weird big break that brought them to the attention of John Waters. It's enough to make anyone who has never been to the Vanity Fair post-Oscar party weep at how banal life can be.
In all honesty, reading Role Models makes me wish I could be a beggar in front of John Waters' house. Sure, I'd flatter him (and because I am genuinely interested!) by asking him to screen his movies for me, but then I'd want to have the resources to take his advice (or some of it, anyway!). In his chapter "Bookworm," he recommends his indispensable books. Well, Mr. Waters, you sold me on wanting to read In Youth Is Pleasure, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Darkness And Day [admitting that probably excludes me from ever running for public office again, though possibly reading a John Waters book did that already!] and even Two Serious Ladies, but my wife and I spent our disposable income for books on yours, can we borrow your copies? Waters makes us yearn for more time to read and live rather than press ridiculously through the day to day like we are all bound to.
Because the book is a series of essays, there is a hit-or-miss quality to Role Models. Some of the chapters do not add up to much, like how "Little Richard, Happy At Last" is more self-referential about getting and participating in the interview with Little Richard than the content of the interview. In other words, the chapter is more about meeting Little Richard than anything Waters learned about him by interviewing him. Waters discusses rumors or preconceptions he had based on Little Richard's life, but they do not get debunked or clarified through the interview.
But what makes Role Models a salivatingly-good read, outside of Waters's distinctive voice with lines like "Today Bobby is renting or maybe squatting in a run-down home surrounded by jail-strength industrial chain-link fencing. As I pull up in a ridiculous Mercedes-Benz that I didn't order but was upgraded to by the car rental place, I feel a sickening sense of entitlement" (203), are the virtual unknown subjects in the book. Bobby Garcia, a gay man who loathes having sex with gay men and instead made a living (for a long time) making videos in which straight Marines jerk off for him and the camera and occasionally get involved with oral or anal sex with him. Yes, it sounds like an absurd plot for some strange gross-out comedy, but these are the personalities John Waters uncovers and explores in the book, in the process revealing to the reader an entirely different reality than the mundane norm where , well, shit, I can't think of what we're "supposed" to be like now that I've read this book!
No, reading Role Models will not make you into a pervert or seduce one to the "gay lifestyle," but it is enough to open one's mind to a world much larger than the Hollywood heteronormal, everything-is-easy-to-understand-and-feel portrayal of reality. That is the gift of the outsider and John Waters is a wonderful guide!
For other books of essays, please visit my reviews of:
Letters From The Earth - Mark Twain
When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris
Politically Incorrect - Ralph Reed
6.5/10
For other book reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!
© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |
No comments:
Post a Comment