"... the way people (and mice, apparently) fabricate their own realities. When asked how he arrived at the structure of his novel, which zigzags from the 1990s to the 1970s to the 1940s and then forward again, he replied with a koan-like commentary on the illusion of chronology: 'We settle ourselves into a grand fiction of present time. It is a fiction. Technically present time does not exist. Our sense of present time is technically impossible, because when you lift a foot from the ground, lifting it up is already past, setting it down on the ground is already future.' Herzog bristled slightly when I asked why he is drawn to stories of zealots who go to extreme lengths to pursue their obsessions — figures like Timothy Treadwell in 'Grizzly Man,' whose quest to commune with bears ended with his being mauled to death, and Lope de Aguirre, whose mission to find a lost city of gold was chronicled by Herzog in his 1972 historical drama 'Aguirre, the Wrath of God.' 'They are all family. You recognize your siblings,' he said of his subjects. 'I think none of my characters are extreme nor strange. They are dignified human beings, and they take the struggle of life as it’s thrown at them.'"
The book — which you can pre-order at Amazon — comes out on the 14th. The audiobook is read by Herzog. The book is about Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who continued fighting World War II for 29 years after it ended.
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The thing about Werner is. You never know when he's taking a piss.(gratuitous British slang)
"He seems incapable of small talk"
Judging by what I have heard and read, Herzog constantly seeks meaning in everything. He lives seriously.
"or explaining his craft"
For a real artist, what's there to explain?
I just preordered. I will probably buy the audiobook, too. I love Herzog and especially love listening to him speak.
Many an artist is like that. They don't give "straightforward" answers to interviewers. Maybe they can't or maybe they don't want to. Maybe it's a defense mechanism. Maybe it just became a habit.
Herzog is very German, even though he may actually be a Croatian or something like that. He plays up his "Germanness." It must be amusing to do so in Southern California, like Thomas Mann dressing like he was still in the world of Bismarck and Wagner, rather than the world of Mickey Mouse and Gidget.
In theory, time is an illusion. In the real world you find out soon enough that time is real. Time. The significance of time. We are all thinking about the significance of time.
Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” podcast discussed Hiroo Onoda in “Supernova in the East”. The whole premise of the episode was explaining how a culture could develop to create a fanatical loyalty of its citizens that they would feel honored bound to fight to the death. Hiroo Onoda didn’t believe the war could have ended because he couldn’t believe Japan had surrendered rather than fighting to the death of every last person. Hiroo Onoda wasn’t alone which is all the more fascinating.
People, mice, and the manufacturing of reality, were also the topics of Douglas Adams' fine Hitchhiker series of books. Not as serious as Herzog's tome, certainly, but more cheeky. In those books, the point is made that reality is what it is, and our experience of it is what it is, and living life without too much digging into the ultimate meaning of it all might be the best way to find out about it after all. That, and a towel is very useful to have at all times. I bet Hiroo Onoda would have agreed with that last bit.
He was good in the first Jack Reacher movie.
A few days ago, I finished reading a novel titled The Cartographers, by Peng Sheperd.
The eponymous "cartographers" are seven graduate students in the Cartography Department of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. They all graduated in about 1996 (I forget the exact year). They all are crazy about cartography and are about to embark on their individual cartography careers, but first they all go on a vacation together to New York's Catskill Mountains.
After that vacation they all go their separate ways, but they keep in touch and collaborate on a group project they call The Dream Album (or something like that) of fantasy places that are not on any real maps but should be.
Anyway, it turns out that the novel's protagonist, a young woman, somehow was born in such a place -- to two of the seven cartographers -- during that vacation.
Some years later, that imaginary place is printed -- as a copyright trap -- on a New York state map that is given away or sold cheaply to customers of gas stations. In other words, if some other map-making company simply copies the map and sells it, then the presence of that non-existing place on the map proves that the map simply was copied in violation of the copyright of the actual map-maker.
Anyway, it turns out that if a person has that map and goes to that place, then the place exists for that person. However, if someone who does not have map and goes there, then the place is just a big empty field.
So, someone (one or more of the seven cartographers?) is trying to destroy all those old maps -- but one of the maps is preserved by one cartographer.
======
I found the novel's beginning to be very interesting, because it depicts some aspects of the work of cartographers -- in particular, those who acquire, archive and curate old maps.
About half way through, however, I became impatient with the story's slow progress, and so I speed-read the novel's last half.
Herzog has become a caricature of a German artist. I mean that as a compliment. His cameos (see "The Mandalorian"), his reputation as an extreme director -- he's beyond boundaries. I hope his book is good.
You should be following @WernerTwertzog on Twitter, as we all know.
"He seems incapable of small talk or explaining his craft, instead delivering a series of observations about the slippery nature of time, the mutability of consciousness and..."
To my surprise, the column didn't mention Joe Biden.
Aguirre: the Wrath of God is pretty amazing. Everybody should see it.
Herzog was the bad guy in the first Jack Reacher movie.
Playing bad guys is a lot of fun. Actors love to do it.
I've often heard that Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski frequently came to blows on the set. After watching Grizzly Man, I concluded Herzog probably had it coming.
wow
An old friend of mine (Edward Roland) was traveling aimlessly in south America when he came across Herzog and his crew who were preparing to film Aguirre the Wrath of God. They asked him to stay with them and wrote him into the script as the negro slave (a pretty major character).
Mr. Roland has long been well known locally as "Black Ed" (to distinguish him from hippie Ed, and just plain old Ed). He rides around town still on a recumbent bicycle, and eats nothing but uncooked vegetables. When I was friends with him he slept under a wooden pyramid with his head downhill. He didn't speak a word of German, but his voice in the movie is dubbed into German and sounds exactly like the read Ed.
I've often heard that Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski frequently came to blows on the set. After watching Grizzly Man, I concluded Herzog probably had it coming.
Actually, on the set of Fitzcarraldo, Kinski and Herzog both hatched simultaneous plots to murder each other. I think Herzog also pulled a gun on Kinski at some point. He talks about it in his documentary "Mein Liebster Fiend" ("My Best Fiend") in which Herzog gets to have the posthumous last word about his friendship with Kinski.
One of my favorite Herzog moments is when he was giving an interview and gets hit by a stray bullet, but refuses to end the interview saying "It is an insignificant wound..."
Wow indeed.
My own comment at 10:01 AM
Anyway, it turns out that the novel's protagonist, a young woman, somehow was born in such a place -- to two of the seven cartographers -- during that vacation.
I forgot to add that the novel's protagonist -- a young woman -- follows in her parents' footsteps and likewise becomes a cartographer. And she becomes engaged to a cartographer.
Many of the novel's characters are cartographers, and all of them are involved passionately in various skullduggeries.
Paper Towns, a young adult novel and film, makes mention of those cartographers' copyright traps. The story, though, doesn't have much to do with them.
I think I would listen to Herzog read the ingredients in a bottle of ketchup.
"The thing about Werner is. You never know when he's taking a piss.(gratuitous British slang)"
"Taking the piss."
I haven't paid him any attention in decades. I find on Youtube that he doesn't credit pyschoanalytics and doesn't dream much--which he speculates may be the reason directing appeals to him.
Feind in German is closer to 'enemy' than to 'fiend' in English.
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