Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist: 1 - Tapa dura

"Finally, after twenty-plus years of coaxing, cajoling, pleading and basic needling on my part, my ol' scallywag brother, Jonathan Shaw has put his pen to paper, dragging and drudging up virulent and violent hallucinations from his not-so-cute brainscape. Been waiting too long for this. So have you, whoever you are, believe me. If you don't yet know him, you will. If you didn't want to, too bad. Once he's in, he's in. Jonathan Shaw's words, work, life, lives, deaths, rants, rage, hilarity and taste rank with the best of 'em. If Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neil Cassidy, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Edward Teach, Charley Parker, Iggy Pop, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, R. Crumb, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Dashiell Hammett, E.M. Cioran and all of the Three Stooges had all been involved in some greasy, shameful whorehouse orgy, Jonathan Shaw would surely be its diabolical reprobate spawn."--Johnny Depp

"Jonathan Shaw is the great nightmare anti-hero of the new age."―Iggy Pop

"Although known primarily for his work as a famed tattoo artist, Shaw is also a talented writer whose latest book, Scab Vendor, draws on his own life, vacillating between first person and third person to tell his story in this sprawling, experimental autobiography... The comparisons to Charles Bukowski are obvious, but Scab Vendor reminded me more of Hubert Selby Jr. and Henry Miller in terms of tone and style... Interspersed with vignettes from Shaw's life (and) foggy memories of a chaotic childhood ("other kids got [the] Hardy Boys... I got Hieronymus Bosch"), Scab Vendor [is] a whirlpool of drugs and alcohol. The gritty, gutter prose is sharpened by Shaw's gift for dialogue and sharp insight. This tale is one of shame, humility, and wonder at how it all happened."--Publishers Weekly

"The grunge of Bukowski... The teeth-grinding momentum of the Beats."--Kirkus Reviews

"Jonathan Shaw is the next Bukowski."--Rolling Stone

"{Shaw is} a hunk of shit fish-asshole cunt-sucker!''--Charles Bukowski

"Is he bitter? Oh, just a tad."--R. Crumb

"Compelling and hot as a sticky summer night that won't let you sleep."--New York Times Book Review

"Jonathan Shaw's writing is one hell of a wild ride through the bizarre netherworld of his own damaged consciousness. His experiences are real and his language and insights kinetic and brutal. This is what the French would call "littérature maudit," and Shaw's writing certifies him as a subversive and criminal inhabitant of the world of human expression."--Jim Jarmusch

"Jonathan Shaw is a decorated veteran of the drug war whose deviance is only exceeded by his clever ability to weave his own sickness into a true classic of American literature. He is Oscar Wilde and Charlie Manson tattooing a portrait of Dorian Gray on the white underbelly of a society desperately in need of this type of fearless storytelling.''--Marilyn Manson

"Jonathan Shaw has been a Zelig-like figure in American underground culture for the past forty years."--Esquire

"...{Jonathan Shaw is} a real writer..."--Henry Rollins

"Jonathan Shaw has made it through the eye-of-the-needle into our lives. This kind of rite of passage gives his perspectives a sense of the physical world that he creates for us. To immerse ourselves in this bare bones-attitude is what a novel is supposed to do for the reader. Lucky us.''--Debbie Harry

"Jonathan Shaw's passionate descriptions of the surreal, paranoid jungle he inhabits capture the haunting poetry of his soul.''--Hubert Selby Jr., author of Requiem for a Dream and Last Exit to Brooklyn

"Shaw's writing reinvents and promotes life. Be prepared to see yourself in the pages of Narcisa, the essence of your own poor humanity, weak and vulnerable and unprepared - and to see at the same time your own strengths, whatever your circumstances."--Paulo Lins, author of City of God

"Required reading. One of my favorite writers."--Lydia Lunch, author of Paradoxia

"Jonathan Shaw has had his passport stamped in hell so many times he could get his mail there... Written in blood, his writing takes us places most people never come back from... Vile as junkie-cum, beautiful as a dead drunk's bible, Scab Vendor will keep you clawing at the pages..."--Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

"{Jonathan Shaw's Narcisa is a} compelling novel that grips you right from the beginning."--VICE

"Shaw's poetic collage lays bare the poetry of the streets and probes the shadowy corners of the soul with fearless candor."--Jillian Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of Some Girls

"Literate and compelling..."--Harlan Ellison, Grammy Award-winning author of Strange Wine

"Jonathan Shaw has blazed a new literary trail, and ripped a new asshole in consensus reality along the way."--Carlo McCormick, author of Trespass

"Jonathan Shaw is a revelation. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but Shaw's work is an IED on paper."--Dan Fante, author of Chump Change and 86'd

"Dazzling!"--Harold Schechter, author of Deviant and Man-Eater

"Amazing writing."--Kat Von D.

"An example of human indestructibility that is hard to surpass."--Eugene Hutz, Gogol Bordello

"A writer of immense passion and soul, Jonathan Shaw has the courage to vivisect his own soul.''--Joe Coleman, author of Cosmic Retribution

"Few have dipped so deeply or functioned so extensively in the cultural underbelly of our world than Jonathan Shaw... He is a virtuoso."--Robert Williams, author of Slang Aesthetics

"Jonathan Shaw is a true old-school storyteller with a criminal mind and heart who's lived what he writes. Welcome to Hell.''--Bonge, Hells Angels

"Jonathan Shaw is a Renaissance Lowlife. Openhearted prose... Pure magic.''--Larry "Ratso" Sloman, author of The Secret Life of Houdini

"An agonized cri de coeur ... Shades of Dante, of Baudelaire, of Bukowski, of Celine..."--Tom Nolan, author of Three Chords for Beauty's Sake

"Nightmarish talent... wedged between outlaw and genius... serious street cred."--N.Y. Press

"Jonathan Shaw is a myth: an American anti-hero whose wild exploits are folklore in underground circles the world over."--Huck magazine

"Bruised, brilliant and unapologetically raw."--Gonzo Today

"Jonathan Shaw is an American classic... a barbarian intellectual and optimistic cynic..."--Juxtapoz

"{Shaw's Narcisa follows} in the great tradition of cultural criminals like Genet, Rimbaud, Artaud through the Beats.''--Paper

"Shaw is an acknowledged master craftsman."--Seconds

"Narcisa reads like a long-lost literary classic by Kerouac, Burroughs, Miller, Fante, Bukowski."--CVLT Nation

"A cult classic... Oozes delicious dysfunction... Gritty and raw as an open wound... Never before has an author explored {co-dependency} with such honest integrity ..."--Beverly Hills Courier

"In line with the best of Fante, Bukowski and Kerouac...Uppercuts for each sentence... Powerful, furious, brilliant." --Librairie Quai des Brumes, France

"Magnificently narrated by Shaw, Narcisa presents a violent and dazzling Rio de Janeiro as its ghostly, otherworldly stage."--El Fanzine, Mexico

"Intense as hallucinations from the flames of Hell, Shaw's writing transcends the dark melancholy of a devastated Paradise."--Reporte Indigo, Mexico

"{Narcisa} will bring tears to reader's eyes."--Folha de São Paulo, Brazil

"Narcisa' is the confession of a hungry ghost, the insatiable, the unloved core of humanity's deepest sorrow. 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 intoxicating classic of subversive writing. Stains your soul with pitch black tar."--Dengue Magazine, Brazil

"Shaw is an iconoclastic stranger in the literary nest."--Life and Style

"Very vibrant, very important art."--Men's Journal

"Jonathan Shaw is a notorious innovator and creator."--Ponyboy magazine

"... A resoundingly successful debut {by a} counter-culture icon... "--Inquisitr

"Shaw is a true philosophical, transcendent soul."--Citizine

"Absolutely intoxicating... Bukowski on acid... Dark and hypnotic."--Powell's Books

Jonathan Shaw's Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist is a surreal, multi-generational roller coaster ride through the underbelly of modern culture, charting the course of a life measured by extremes, and all the people, places, and events that shaped that life into a survivor's tale of epic proportions. In its pages, Shaw takes the reader deep, not only into the recesses of his extraordinary mind and adventures, but also into the strange and magical process of memoir-writing itself.

If truth is indeed stranger than fiction, then, as Shaw's friend and literary mentor Charles Bukowski once told him, much of this book would have to be lived before it could be written. In that sense, Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist is much more than a fascinating chronicle of a popular outlaw artist's creative evolution. It is a multicolored, cinematic, modern-day Odyssey, written in blood, ink, and tears--a kaleidoscopic, visionary roadmap to the journey of the human soul.