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Written by Lisa Neff, Staff writer
Jun 17, 2010
The cover of John Waters’ “Role Models” from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Decades ago now, my history-teaching dad gave me a yellowed copy of John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” with the instruction, “Read.”
Robert Kennedy, in the forward, said his brother’s book contained “not just stories of the past but a hook of hope and confidence for the future. What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.”
But I couldn’t “read.” Those “Profiles in Courage” stories were boring then, and they still were boring when I picked up a new edition of the book a couple of years ago.
So now I’m wondering, what does it mean that I wouldn’t finish “Profiles in Courage,” but I couldn’t put down “Role Models,” John Waters’ profiles of a very different sort?
Yes, I wanted to read about Waters’ original “Bad Seed” Patty McCormack. No, I didn’t want to read about Kennedy’s Daniel Webster. Yes, I wanted to read about Manson girl Leslie Van Houten. No, I didn’t want to read about Robert A. Taft. Yes, I wanted to read about pornographer Bobby Garcia. No, I didn’t want to read about John Quincy Adams. Yes, I wanted to read about Little Richard’s “a-wop-bop-a-loo-mop” rise to fame. No, I didn’t want to read about Sam Houston opposing Texas’ secession from the Union.
This is a confessional review because “Role Models,” while a collection of portraits about famous and infamous others, is really a confessional for Waters. “I wish I were Johnny Mathis,” he writes in the opening sentence. “Tennessee Williams saved my life,” he confesses in chapter two. “Fashion is very important to me,” he asserts. “Every Friday night of my life I drink,” he says, beginning to explain his one-night-a-week alcoholism. “Little Richard scared my grandmother in 1957,” he offers with humor. And, defiantly, he says, “I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness.”
The writing in “Role Models” is as pencil-sharp as Waters’ trademark moustache is depicted in the cover sketch, and the content will amuse, engage, inform, horrify and baffle – but never bore.
Four times I read the “Little Richard, Happy at Last” chapter, in which Waters recounts his interview with the architect of rock ’n’ roll. A passage from that chapter: “‘I wish you had been Pope,’ I blurt out, all whipped up in a religious frenzy, throwing caution to the wind. Richard doesn’t miss a beat, and I wonder if he has already considered the possibility. ‘I idolized the Pope when I was a little boy,’ he says reverently. ‘I liked the pumps he wore. I think the Pope really dresses.’”
I know, you already are setting aside WiG to go online shopping for “Role Models.” I’d lend you my copy, but I think I’m going to give it to my dad with the instruction, “Read.
