Jonathan Shaw is a world-traveling outlaw artist, gonzo war correspondent, novelist, blogger, head doctor, anti-folk hero and whorehouse philosopher. A legendary tattoo master and notorious creator of trendsetting underground art, over the decades Shaw’s work has steadily infiltrated and quietly swayed the direction of popular culture worldwide. From ‘reality’ based television programs to the fashion styles of the rich and famous, his original, innovative mark is clearly visible everywhere you look in modern style.
A child of the 50’s, Shaw grew up the bastard spawn of a brief, violent and unhappy marriage between jazz legend Artie Shaw and the beautiful and glamorous Romani-Gypsy starlet Doris Dowling. Shaw’s particularly surreal world view was largely shaped during the tumultuous Vietnam era, then sharpened like a straight razor by massive teenaged LSD consumption and close personal interactions with some of the weirdest minds of a weird time. After running with the likes of Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, the Manson Family and Charles Bukowski, Shaw, like most of his friends, eventually fell prey to heroin addiction and was swept away in a degenerate wave of crime, sudden death and moral degradation. Around the age of 19, fleeing for his life, he left 1970’s Hollywood behind to travel the world by thumb and tramp freighter and he is still out there somewhere. Many years clean and sober now, the heavily tattooed author was recently referred to affectionately by old pal Marilyn Manson as “a decorated veteran of the drug war.”
Today Shaw lives wherever he is, but resides mostly in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, making frequent visits to other home bases in NYC and Southern California, when not traveling the rest of the world. He has one adult son, also an artist, as well as an extended Gypsy family of old and new friends, lovers, admirers, well-wishers and partners in crime all over the world. Many years retired now from a burgeoning tattoo industry he once set the standards for, he continues to test the limits of his reality, traveling the South American backlands by motorcycle, living with witch doctors, artists, outlaws and whores, while continuing to terrify and inspire his steadily growing fanatical following with nightmarish poetry, memoirs, screenplays and fiction.
His favorite motto is: “Fuck you, I win.”
NARCISA: OUR LADY OF ASHES available now!
Available internationally, Jonathan Shaw’s Indie Book Award-winning new novel, Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes is the renowned tattoo artist and underground journalist’s last-published and most shocking in-your-face, head-first plunge into the sewers of outlaw literature.
Set in the hot urban sprawl of Rio de Janeiro, Shaw’s breathlessly authentic, page-turning tale of love and terror follows the twisted saga of a middle-aged Gypsy ex-con and the love of his life, the beautifully manipulative and insane teenage crack whore, Narcisa. Their paranormal adventures are recounted with hilarious, poignant and often tragic detail. Penned in an eerily voyeuristic style spanning three years of frantic diary entries, Shaw’s unforgettable characters navigate the teeming slums and lice-infested flophouses of Rio. Their adrenaline-charged exploits prod the reader at gunpoint through a hair-raising psychedelic gauntlet of demonic entities and near-death experiences while desperately seeking passage to enlightenment at the hands of a bloodthirsty Goddess of the Apocalypse.
Throughout this darkly hilarious and brutally intelligent litany of doomed love, brutal violence, drug addiction, compulsive sex, mutual enslavement and the afflicted soul’s quest for salvation, Shaw proves that it is more desirable to follow one’s heart into even the darkest regions of hell — an area with which the writer is right at home — than to live for one moment in self-pity or regret.
Inspired by real-life events, Narcisa became an overnight cult classic. Now the much sought-after and out of print collector’s edition has been completely rewritten by its author, as well as having spawned a sequel, both books soon to be re-released by a major US publishing house.
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