Publishers Weekly
10/09/2023
The idiosyncrasies of filmmaker Herzog (The Twilight World) are on full display in his eccentric if unreflective memoir. Herzog was born in Munich in 1942 and soon moved with his mother and brother to a farm in the remote town of Sachrang to escape Allied bombings. As a young teen, he returned to Munich and, convinced after a spiritual experience while working on a fishing boat that he wouldn’t live past 18 (he writes of the episode that he was “bedded in a cosmos without compare, above, below, all around a speechless silence”), began making films because he assumed “they would be all that was left of me” after his premature demise. He explains that he learned almost “all there is to know” about moviemaking from “the thirty or forty pages on radio, film, and TV in an encyclopedia” and expounds on the making of his most famous films, revealing that Jack Nicholson turned down the lead in Fitzcarraldo because he “only took parts that left him free to watch Los Angeles Lakers’ games.” The prose is often beautiful and there’s no shortage of prime Herzog-isms (“I always wanted to direct a Hamlet and have all the parts played by ex-champion livestock auctioneers”), but the director offers disappointingly little in the way of emotional introspection. Still, Herzog’s fans will want to check this out. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Stepping outside a conventional human identity to achieve an ecstatic vision is the ruling passion that runs through this astonishing book. Translated by Michael Hofmann, Herzog’s memoir invites comparison with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s, published in 1782, four years after the author’s death—though it is a better written and markedly more enigmatic text than Rousseau’s scandalously revealing Confessions . . . Regaling stories that sometimes seem beyond credibility, Herzog does not claim to be offering a literal rendition of the events of his life . . . His memoir should be read for what it is: a visionary masterpiece that speaks, as did the ancient Greek daimon, of the world of mortals and the regions that seem to lie beyond.” —John Gray, The New Statesman
“The book is nonlinear and exuberantly free-associative, less a narrative than an extravagant demonstration of sensibility . . . Like so many of his films, his memoir is not at home in its ostensible genre. A very thin thread of autobiography runs through an otherwise vibrant tapestry of anecdotes and adventures . . . His melancholic, meditative and theatrically nostalgic way of being is as irrepressible in his writing as it is in his films . . . I feel the same sense of awe when I contemplate the phenomenon of Werner Herzog as I do when I contemplate the pyramids. Amazing, that this fabulous impracticality exists.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
“Written in that rich, dramatic speaking style . . . Every Man for Himself and God Against All is packed with memorable vignettes and tidbits of information . . . God also makes two appearances . . . But what He’s wearing is something only Herzog could dream up. So is every word in this entertaining and informative book.” —Odie Henderson, The Boston Globe
“Like his films (Fitzcarraldo, say, or Aguirre, the Wrath of God), Herzog’s memoir is a decidedly nontraditional piece of storytelling . . . The book is written in a literary voice that is outspoken and conversational . . . (The translation by Hofmann, who has also translated books by Wim Wenders and Franz Kafka, is delightful.) A fascinating portrait of an inventive and idiosyncratic filmmaker.” —Booklist
“Herzog in all his extravagant, perspicacious glory . . . witty and captivating as he recollects all kinds of odd, curious, and outlandish events, people, and injuries . . . Fans and neophytes alike will relish the opportunity to delve deeply into Herzog’s fascinating mind.” —Kirkus (starred review)
International Praise
“Every Man for Himself and God Against All is a literary event unto itself, and the fact that it mirrors Werner Herzog's life through his own eyes makes it all the more powerful. In particular the end of the book, which is a true a sensation . . . a must-read!” —Freunde der Künste
“A book to marvel at—until the very last line.” —WDR
“His prose is infused with poetry and full of lyrical passages” —Deutsche Welle
“An event” —Süddeutsche Zeitung
“Of greatest significance, however, are the memoirs that Werner Herzog has now published under the title of one of his films: Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Herzog is a magnificent, seductive narrator. He allows himself to be steered by his own associative thinking without a second of boredom.” —SWR
“Herzog's book depicts in cool, sparse, poetic language, the primitiveness and magic of the archaic rural conditions in which he spent his early childhood years” —Spiegel
OCTOBER 2023 - AudioFile
Werner Herzog is a strange and fascinating film director (also an actor, novelist, and opera director). Judging by this autobiography, he is a strange and fascinating individual as well. Narrating his own story, he jumps around in time and place but within the general chronology of his life and career--after his childhood, mostly his career. Herzog has a strong Bavarian accent, but it is almost always easily understandable, and in the audiobook he explains his preference for presenting his own words. This audiobook will be of most interest to film buffs, but Herzog is such an interesting character and his adventures have been so dramatic that an interest in his movies is not necessary to enjoy it. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-07-09
Herzog in all his extravagant, perspicacious glory.
Now 80, the acclaimed director, documentarian, and author, a “product of my mistakes and misjudgments,” recalls his “archaic,” poverty-stricken early years in the Bavarian Alps on the edge of a war before digressing into the making of The Wild Blue Yonder, “a completely fantastical science fiction film.” Throughout, Herzog is witty and captivating as he recollects all kinds of odd, curious, and outlandish events, people, and injuries—maybe, he speculates, some memories aren’t real. Discussing ski jumping as a boy, he shifts to a film he made about it. When the family moved to Munich, the author met the maniacal Klaus Kinski, who would appear in his films. “I knew what I was letting myself in for,” he writes. Herzog’s brief time at university was a “sham”; he was already making films. “Even physically, I was hardly ever there; there were entire semesters when I showed up once, maybe twice,” he writes. The author became a Catholic as a teenager, and while he later left the faith, he admits to a “distant echo of divinity” in some films. “There are various recurring tropes in my films,” he notes, “that are almost always derived from personal experience.” Past and present mix as Herzog rambles widely from job to job, country to country, memory to memory. He chronicles how he learned from others’ bad films, scrambled to raise money for projects, and acted in other people’s films, and he touches on the genesis of his own. The atmosphere in Aguirre, the Wrath of God was “dire,” and Herzog swapped his “good shoes for a bathtub full of fish” to feed his starving crew. During the filming of Fitzcarraldo, almost everything went wrong. “I don’t see the things that fascinate me as esoteric,” he writes near the conclusion of the book, which ends midsentence.
Fans and neophytes alike will relish the opportunity to delve deeply into Herzog’s fascinating mind.
