Russian existentialism dwells on two questions: “What to do?” and “Who is to blame?” Jonathan Shaw replaces them with: “What else can I do?” and “For the good and the bad, I take responsibility for all!” Which, at the end of the day, sums up a living example of human undestructability that’s hard to surpass. 

When I first met Jonathan in Rio de Janeiro he said, “I have gypsy blood, but dont know much about the culture, so maybe you can teach me.”

 Well, after hearing bits of his life story I said: “I got nothing to teach you, Cigano, you been living it… Now just let me introduce you to the rest of the family.”

      - Eugene Hütz
           (Gogol Bordello)

….Kerouac is on the verge of a stroke trying to follow the beat, Baudelaire horrified, shaking like a little girl – and Bukowski can’t get enough from the fish-ass taste on his tongue:
Narcisa, Our Lady of Ashes is here and she is yanking them out of their rotten graves to rape them with to most powerful of all drugs: reality.
This is a story of commitment. Commitment to love and the absence of consequences; like every great love should be.
From page one till the end, it is hard to take a breath of air. And forget about pure air by the way. There is not the slightest moment of hesitation by the author to dive head first into the deepest realms of hell, have brunch with Mr. Goat Head in person and let the reader be shat on with pure pain. No compassion whatsoever.
After going through so much immorality on every holy-fucking page of this Goddamn-Bible of Hell, I found and learned one solid moral:
“Love is a piece of maggot-infested, putrid meat that hangs on a hook of an abandoned Butcher’s shop in hell. Only those hungry and brave enough to eat it like a fancy carpaccio will be blessed by the sickness, the wounds that only God himself will heal and transform…”
I got all this and more from this book. Salve Jonathan Shaw,  the most authentic person I know.

- Antonio Luiz “Tonico” Monteiro de Carvalho

I picked up Narcisa at bedtime, thinking that, like many books people give me, it would literally bore me to sleep. Quite the contrary! I stayed up, compulsively turning the pages, and read the whole thing in one night! Wow! What a story! How the author lived to tell it, only Jesus knows. Jonathan Shaw is a true Alchemist. In his work as in his life, again and again he has turned shit into gold.

- Inger Lorre (The Nymphs, Motel Shootout)

Narcisa left me feeling the sting of a brass-knuckled hook to the jaw. The pain comes on like a storm. But masterfully. At the precise point I can’t bear any more, it tackles me with a beautiful kiss. It’s a winderful feeling of pain and beauty that screams and sings to me at the same time.

-Bryan Ray Turcotte (Author of Fucked Up and Photocopied and Punk Is Dead: Punk is Everything)

Reading NARCISA: OUR LADY OF ASHES is like sliding into the world your parents warned you about. Jonathan Shaw’s had his knife on the pulse of the underworld for over thirty years. Now he’s cut it open, for all to taste the filth. Wanna be thrown against a brick wall of words? Crack this book…

-Howie Pyro (The Blessed, DGeneration, Danzig. Author of Confessions of A Rat Fink with Ed “Big Daddy” Roth)

CONGRATULATIONS TO NOAH LEVINE AND HIS BEAUTIFUL WIFE AMY FIELDS  ON THEIR SOON TO BE BABY GIRL, HAZEL.

Narcisa is the confession of a hungry ghost, the insatiable, the unloved core of humanity’s deepest sorrow. The addiction to suffering, which is the self-created Hell realm so vividly described in these pages. This beautifully written, brutally honest tale speaks to the wounded and weary child within each of us.

-Noah Levine  (Author of Dharma Punx and Against the Stream)

An authentic and colorful novel like NARCISA can only be produced by an individual who has experienced an authentic and colorful existence. Few have dipped so deeply or functioned so extensively in the cultural underbelly of our world than the notorious artist and adventurer, Jonathan Shaw. In this literary firmament he is a virtuoso.
- Robert Williams (Painter, Author of Malicious Resplendence and Through Prehensile Eyes)

Tattoo of Robert Williams’ cartoon by Jonathan Shaw: