John Waters Reads Rachel Cusk, Kevin Killian...

Poet and writer Ruby Brunton interviewed John Waters for Ssense! The filmmaker and author of the "help-for-others" book, Mr. Know-It-All (FSG), discusses how to redefine good and bad taste, not-living in New York, and what he's been reading:

...[You] mention trying to read the latest Rachel Cusk novel. Did you manage to finish it? What’d you think?

I loved her last one. My favorite thing is when she’s on an airplane in the aisle seat chatting to a woman in the window seat who only has half her face done up, and she says “Well people can’t see the other half” Which I thought was a really great detail.

Well, you obviously have great taste in books. What else have you been reading lately?

What I really liked recently was this book about the so-called “Irish Troubles” called Say Nothing, Fascination by Kevin Killian, the latest Janet Malcolm, the biography of Clarice Lispector called Why This World and now I’m obsessed with her and reading all her novels. Oh and Edouard Louis, Who Killed My Father, I absolutely loved that. I just finished the Gary Indiana Village Voice columns, Vile Days.