god, what a title. this is one book i might consider listening to as an audiobook someday because it’s narrated by herzog himself, with his mesmerizing accent and cadence (after i wrote that, i encountered a chapter where herzog describes learning hypnosis and says he uses some of the vocal techniques in his documentary narration). it’s a bit like sitting down and listening to herzog give an off-the-cuff monologue for hours (my dinner with herzog?), it’s not particularly focused and tends to wander through time and topics with a conversational logic. the chapter divisions for the most part seem to be completely arbitrary. herzog’s life as a whole is further evidence for the theory that if you have the right kind of energy or attitude, you draw insane characters and escapades to yourself like a magnet.

there is much herzog can’t explain, like his attraction to certain images, or even why he got so deep into film. those hoping for deep introspective insights will be left wanting. although it’s evident that herzog has been obsessed with filmmaking for his entire adult life, you will find no dramatic origin story or theory as to how his obsession developed, it remains a cosmic mystery. there is no sudden paradigm shift or moment of revelation, in fact herzog goes out of his way to mention how unimpressed he was with the very first films he saw as a child while living in the remote sachrang valley, or even as a young teen going to the cinema in munich. then, suddenly, he’s devoted his life to filmmaking, working a bunch of different menial jobs while living like a miser to save up enough money to make a film, serially entering artistic competitions or grifting scholarships for more filmmaking money, stealing a camera from the local filmmaker’s union. every single subject he becomes fixated on eventually becomes the inspiration for a film, striking images he once saw on his travels decades ago will be hunted down across vast distances of space and time if he thinks they are appropriate for a certain project. if he’d been born in a later generation, he would probably have become a respected niche youtuber.

I’d rather die than to go an analyst, because it’s my view that something fundamentally wrong happens there. If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become “uninhabitable.” I am convinced that it’s psychoanalysis - along with quite a few other mistakes- that has made the twentieth century so terrible. As far as I’m concerned, the twentieth century, in its entirety, was a mistake.