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WERNER HERZOG'S CONQUEST OF THE USELESS

Here's something to do before the end of the month: 

Read this book and watch "Fitzcarraldo," "Aguirre: Wrath of God," the Herzog documentary about Klaus Kinski called "My Best Fiend," and the Les Blank documentary about the making of "Fitzcarraldo" called "The Burden of Dreams." 

A highly recommended crash course in Herzogian ecstatic truth . . . 

At one point, a diary entry begins with a hilarious understatment, something like "Profoundly unreconciled to nature." 

But the writing is so natural and the descriptions of the jungle and mountains and fog and insects and, well, nature in general are profoundly evocative. 

Like all Herzog documentaries, you also have to sort of treat it like fiction. 

Mick Jagger, who was in the film early on, is portrayed as pleasantly impish.

The NYT Book Review review was idiotic, wishing for more logistic/technical information about certain shots, or Coppola's role etc. The reviewer wanted characters who appeared once to be introduced and appear again, as in a novel or non-fiction, not a journal -- he wanted a non-Herzogian non-fiction, essentially. 

But this thing reeks of Herzog everywhere as he charts the athletic/spiritual endurance required of pulling off an ambition like this, and also the singular sort of obsessed perspective that allows it to happen in the first place. 

Also, it's real funny. Dozens of LOLs, often at audacious, over-the-top descriptions, or sudden crazy jumps from sentence to sentence. 

"Seen from the plane, the sheer expanse of the jungle is terrifying; no one who has not been there can picture it. We do not need virtuosos of syntax." 

And yet on every page Werner proves himself a virtuoso of seeing and describing what he's seen. This book is almost more about language than any particular film. Herzog's sentences seem to me sharper and funnier and more peculiarly individuated than those of most contemporary prose writers. 

Plus, this book seems to prove that what's inside the artist comes outside the artist. 

Hope he has a journal like this for Stroszek, too - another highly recommended movie (if you're a Joy Division fan you probably know this as the movie Ian Curtis watched before he hanged himself). 

For more impressions of various books, visit ye olde
Readerly Resonance Chamber


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