John Waters's Reading List
The film director and author of "Make Trouble" says that when a publisher asked him for a blurb for "Transit," he sent back, "Rachel Cusk is too smart for her own good."
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: John Waters (2017)
NYT By the Book column (2017-04-20).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Philipp Meyer · Buy on Amazon
"'American Rust,' by Philipp Meyer, because his last historical novel, 'The Son,' was such an amazingly well-written, violently beautiful page-turner that I have to read what came before."
Gertrude Stein · Buy on Amazon
"the ultimate bedside book — 'The Making of Americans,' by Gertrude Stein. I enormously respect its impenetrability. Maybe this is the best novel ever written, because you can't read it."
Charlie Fox · Buy on Amazon
"Good God, where did this wise-beyond-his-years 25-year-old critic's voice come from? His breath of proudly putrefied air is really something to behold. Yep. Mr. Fox is the real thing."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"I had never read Lydia Davis's translation, so I did recently because I loved her collection of short stories 'Can't and Won't' so much. Can a translator have groupies? If so, I am hers."
Lydia Davis · Buy on Amazon
"I loved her collection of short stories 'Can't and Won't' so much. Can a translator have groupies? If so, I am hers."
James Blake · Buy on Amazon
"'The Joint,' by James Blake. A sexy, funny gayly-incorrect prison memoir that Genet might have liked."
Joy Williams · Buy on Amazon
"'The Visiting Privilege,' by Joy Williams. 'The dead just forget you,' a character reasons, and boy, that is a sobering, ego-crushing thing to tell someone."
Pamela Newkirk · Buy on Amazon
"'Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga,' by Pamela Newkirk. The true story of a Congolese man who is held captive and exhibited next to an orangutan in the Bronx Zoo in the early 1900s."
Ottessa Moshfegh · 2015 · Buy on Amazon
"I gave Ottessa Moshfegh's novel 'Eileen' to everybody as a Christmas present last year."
Ottessa Moshfegh · Buy on Amazon
"her new collection of short stories, 'Homesick for Another World,' will scorch you like a blowtorch."
Anne Tyler · Buy on Amazon
"'Ladder of Years' is my favorite of hers, and it perfectly describes what it is like to be a Baltimorean; unpretentious, impervious to the outside world and layered in eccentric family traditions."
Rachel Cusk · Buy on Amazon
"When her English publisher asked me for a blurb for 'Transit,' I sent back, 'Rachel Cusk is too smart for her own good,' and I meant this as the ultimate compliment. She doesn't suffer fools, and I like that in a writer."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"Ignatius J. Reilly in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' is pretty hard to beat."
Karl Ove Knausgaard · Buy on Amazon
"Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'My Struggle: Book 6.' Hurry up, you lazy English translators. It seems like I finished Volume 5 ages ago!"
Favorite books (2023)
Favorite books recommended by John Waters, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/john-waters-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Thomas Bernhard · Buy on Amazon
"Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth! The Austrian intellectual sourpuss hilariously rejects every literary award he was ever given. Refusal as an art form."
Jane Bowles · Buy on Amazon
Dennis Cooper · Buy on Amazon
"The novelist Dennis Cooper has always made other gay writers nervous. He’s a leader, a radical and his sexual horror stories are smart as hell."
Quentin Crisp · Buy on Amazon
Marguerite Duras (Author), Richard Seaver (Translator) · Buy on Amazon
Jeffrey Eugenides · 2002 · Buy on Amazon
M. F. K. Fisher · Buy on Amazon
David K. Frasier · Buy on Amazon
David Gates · Buy on Amazon
Scott Heim · Buy on Amazon
Philip Hoare · Buy on Amazon
"Aubrey Beardsley, Ronald Firbank, Denton Welch – believe me this ultimate British eccentric made them all seem butch. It’s a crime this book has gone out of print."
A.M. Homes · Buy on Amazon
Michel Houellebecq and Frank Wynne · Buy on Amazon
Michel Houellebecq (Author), Gavin Bowd (Translator) · Buy on Amazon
Jonathan Littell · Buy on Amazon
Michael McClure · Buy on Amazon
"Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid meet up and have sex in this absurdist pop art play that used to get busted for obscenity. Isn’t now the perfect time to bring it back and turn it into a Broadway musical?” -John Waters"
James McCourt · Buy on Amazon
Jimmy McDonough · Buy on Amazon
"The astonishing career of Andy Mulligan, the most pitifully damaged and insane film director whose personal life made Ed Wood’s look like a walk in the park."
Kate Millett · Buy on Amazon
Eileen Myles · Buy on Amazon
James Purdy · Buy on Amazon
"A salaciously satisfying novel that’s a great read, especially if you’re having a sexual nervous breakdown."
Jean Rhys · Buy on Amazon
"To hell with Charles Bukoswki, Jean Rhys is the best alcoholic writer of them all."
Philip Roth (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen ) · Buy on Amazon
Philip Short · Buy on Amazon
"Incredibly detailed biography of the real “filthiest person alive” – the Cambodian leader who executed intellectuals for being in love or even laughing in public."
Lionel Shriver · Buy on Amazon
Lionel Shriver (also rec’d by Tilda Swinton ) · Buy on Amazon
Christina Stead · Buy on Amazon
Anne Tyler · Buy on Amazon
Bruce Wagner · Buy on Amazon
Robert Walser (Author), Susan Bernofsky (Translator) · Buy on Amazon
Denton Welch · Buy on Amazon
Mary Woronov · Buy on Amazon