Playboy Review
Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes has been reviewed by the fine people of Playboy.
For the full review, Click here.
Archive for Reviews
Orbi and Narcisa.
“Jonathan Shaw’s Narcisa- Our Lady Of Ashes is the 21st Century’s Romeo and Juliet. If they went trainspotting, and Juliet was Lolita on crack. Read this book!”
- Alex “Orbi” Orbison (Whitestarr, Author of All You Have is Nothing)
Look who’s back on the block…
NARCISA in the window of St. Mark’s books!
Thanks Wes for sharing the pic.
For those who need a little history lesson:
“Before St. Mark’s underwent its mass “yuppification”, it was
essentially a small, tight-knit, ghetto community where Jonathan’s groundbreaking Fun City Tattoo (NY’s first store-front studio back when tattooing was still illegal) played a
major role. Everyone on the block knew Jonathan well and looked out
for him. He did business with everyone. The cops would drive by as he
stood with his size twelve motorcycle boot on someone’s face and wave
to him without stopping. Everyone was on his side… There was always
a whole vibe over at Fun City, kids outside smoking, laughing,
fighting. Everyone seemed to get along fine though, living
harmoniously in a dysfunctional ecosystem of artists, freaks, losers
and weirdos.”
-From “True Art” by Alessandra DeBenedetti (full article here)
“When the world famous Shaw Fun City studios opened in New York City, this relatively arcane practice was not simply taboo, it was illegal. By citing the mythologies of criminality as relates to Shaw is to understand a very particular creative lineage of social outsiders.”
- From “Illicit Ink” Carlo McCormick of Paper Magazine (full article here)
“On St. Marks Place, a new marriage of caffeine and commerce has popped up with an East Village flavor. “Cappuccino and Tattoos” reads the bright orange awning over No. 94, yoking two businesses: Jonathan Shaw’s 20-year-old World Famous Fun City Tattoos, and the Lynda Diva Go-Cart Cafe, an outdoor coffee stand run by poets that will celebrate its first anniversary this summer.”
-New York Times, 1996 (full article here)
Kenneth Shiffrin on Narcisa
Jonathan Shaw’s bloodthirsty prose pulses through us like an intravenous thrill-ride of the purest dope mixed with gutter water. Narcisa has left a raw indelible tattoo throbbing on the arm of world literature that will take a long time to heal.
-Kenneth Rains Shiffrin (Director of Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow, co-writer of Scardust with Jonathan Shaw and Hubert Selby Jr.)
Visit the film’s Wiki page
Buy Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow on Amazon
Max G. Morton on Narcisa
Congratulations Max on selling out your book!
Narcisa is a living legacy jerked out of a diseased typewriter. A broken bottle to your throat, a steel toe to your head, the electric socket you’ve been waiting to stick your dick into. Jonathan Shaw is a dangerous thinker, an indestructible wolf, and a scab vendor unraveled.
-Max G. Morton, Author Indestructible Wolves of The Apocalypse Junkyard (by Heartworm Press)
NEW INTERVIEW!
THE TATTOO MAGAZINE PRICK HAS POSTED A FEATURE ON JS. HERE’S A LITTLE OF WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY:
“Enter “Narsica: Our Lady of Ashes,” the tale of a man’s love and hate for a teenaged prostitute and drug addict who blows into his world like an unexpected ocean storm on an otherwise calm day of sailing. With his lust for the open road, robust adventures, and thrill for the untamed life, Shaw is the closest thing we have to Kerouac in this modern day and age.”
Marilyn Manson.
Jonathan Shaw is a shameless evildoer and a decorated veteran of the drug war whose deviance is only exceeded by his clever ability to weave his sickness into a true classic piece of American literature.He is Oscar Wilde and Charles Manson tattooing his own ‘Portrait of Dorian Gray’ on the white underbelly of a society desperately in need of this type of fearless storytelling.
-Marilyn Manson
Blurb-o-rama
“Jonathan Shaw has made it through the eye of the needle into our lives. This kind of rite of passage gives his perspective a sense of the physical wold which he creates for us. To immerse ourselves in this bare-bones attitude is what a novel is supposed to do for a reader. Lucky us.” Thank you Debbie Harry for the kind words!
