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A review by bluenicorn
Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder by John Waters
4.0
This was a Goodreads giveaway- which I was so excited to get!
This would probably have been better as an audiobook, but I still really enjoyed reading it in his voice. Some chapters were jam-packed with references that I had to keep looking up because they were fascinating; others were full of references that I eventually stopped looking up because they didn't really matter (he's particularly fond of name-dropping artists). Overall, I enjoyed the book- it was sort of like catching up with that uncle who you don't see very often but when you do, he tells you wild stories that are doubly scandalous because he is older (and even when we know better, we all kind of forget that older adults had crazy times, too) and because they're so bizarre that they become transcendent. Some were definitely stronger than others- like any collection of essays, which is what I think it is more helpful to think of this as. The only weird thing for me was that he would occasionally say something that gave me pause- not because it was "offensive" (which, what does that even mean, coming from John Waters??), but because it reminded me that he is of an older generation that is used to looking at things in a particular way. Not good, not bad- just 'oh, right- he is in his 70s, after all.'
This would probably have been better as an audiobook, but I still really enjoyed reading it in his voice. Some chapters were jam-packed with references that I had to keep looking up because they were fascinating; others were full of references that I eventually stopped looking up because they didn't really matter (he's particularly fond of name-dropping artists). Overall, I enjoyed the book- it was sort of like catching up with that uncle who you don't see very often but when you do, he tells you wild stories that are doubly scandalous because he is older (and even when we know better, we all kind of forget that older adults had crazy times, too) and because they're so bizarre that they become transcendent. Some were definitely stronger than others- like any collection of essays, which is what I think it is more helpful to think of this as. The only weird thing for me was that he would occasionally say something that gave me pause- not because it was "offensive" (which, what does that even mean, coming from John Waters??), but because it reminded me that he is of an older generation that is used to looking at things in a particular way. Not good, not bad- just 'oh, right- he is in his 70s, after all.'