Waters, John – The Bell Bookshop

Liarmouth

Emma — Thu, 05 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A hilariously filthy tale of sex, crime, and family dysfunction from the brilliantly twisted mind of John Waters, the legendary filmmaker and bestselling author of Mr. Know-It-All.

Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She’s smart, she’s desperate, she’s disturbed, and she’s on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her “Liarmouth” – until one insane man makes her tell the truth.

John Waters’s first novel, Liarmouth, is a perfectly perverted “feel-bad romance,” and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.

It’s just as deliciously witty and delightfully deviant as you’d expect from the man William Burroughs called the “Pope of Trash” Independent

‘In Waters’ world, dysfunction is beautiful, degradation is powerful, and there’s nothing to fear because the grotesque is proudly on display’ Buzzfeed

‘Waters is undoubtedly among the greatest American comedians of all time’ Far Out

Mr Know-It-All

Emma — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

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 Pink Flamingos, Polyester, the original Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates, and in Mr. Know-It-All 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.”

Studded with cameos of Waters’s stars, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from Waters’s personal collection, Mr. Know-It-All is Waters’s most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book – another instant Waters classic.

‘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, The Washington Post

‘Carsick becomes a portrait not just of America’s desolate freeway nodes – though they’re brilliantly evoked – but of American fame itself’ Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times Book Review

Carsick

Emma — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin moustache, and a cardboard sign that reads ‘I’m Not Psycho’, he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?

Along the way, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road?

Laced with subversive humour and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable ride with a wickedly funny companion – and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizens.

Carsick

Emma — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Laced with subversive humour and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable ride with a wickedly funny companion – and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizens.