I think it’s healthy to see your parents often (sort of a tune-up), but I think it’s neurotic to actually hang around with them.Ī Grove Press freak around the same time that he was getting expelled from NYU for a pot bust, Waters has a flaky imagination that is often furnished by the conceits of Genet and Burroughs. Since had given the ultimate bad movie reviews by killing people to protest the showing of Mohammad, Messenger of God, one could only tremble at the thought of what they might have pulled had they seen, say, The Deep. The more obscure a town I visit, the greater appeal it has for me, since I figure there’s an audience for anything in New York, but if you can get a following in, say, Mobile, Alabama, you really must be doing something right. Sometimes I just sit on the street and wait for something awful to happen. Since the character turns from teenage delinquent to mugger, prostitute, unwed mother, child abuser, fashion model, nightclub entertainer, murderess, and jailbird, I felt at last Divine had a role she could sink her teeth into.

I never watch television because it’s an ugly piece of furniture, gives off a hideous light, and, besides, I’m against free entertainment. Here are a few jewels among gritty jewels: Pithy aphorisms rub shoulders with sly asides and wry homilies. The not-so-surprising thing about Shock Value, a “tasteful” (meaning cautious) memoir about his special brand of bad taste, is that it proves him to be literary, too - at least in a minor Mark Twain vein. is as conventional as you or I, maybe even more so. If conventional means wedded to conventions, then John Waters, amiable sleaze director of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Polyester. Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste By John Waters Delta, $9.95

Shock Value by John Waters