Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder

<p>No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters. The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics <i>Pink Flamingos</i>, <i>Polyester</i>, <i>Hairspray</i>, <i>Cry-Baby</i>, and <i>A Dirty Shame</i>, is one of the world’s great sophisticates, and in <i>Mr. Know-It-All</i> he serves it up raw: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste, from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself. Through it all, Waters swears by one undeniable truth: “Whatever you might have heard, there is absolutely no downside to being famous. None at all.”<br><br>Studded with cameos, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from the author's personal collection, <i>Mr. Know-It-All</i> is Waters’ most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book—another instant Waters classic.<br><br>“Waters doesn’t kowtow to the received wisdom, he flips it the bird . . . [Waters] has the ability to show humanity at its most ridiculous and make that funny rather than repellent.” —Jonathan Yardley, <i>The Washington Post</i><br><br>“<i>Carsick</i> becomes a portrait not just of America’s desolate freeway nodes—though they’re brilliantly evoked—but of American fame itself.” —Lawrence Osborne,<i> The New York Times Book Review</i></p>