Reader's Digest: December 9, 2023

I’ve been reading Werner Herzog’s newly published memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. I admire the Herzog films I’ve seen—Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Aguirre, the Wrath of God—but, like many, I’m captivated more by the man himself than his creations. Herzog’s literal and metaphoric voice cries out for parody—the comedian Paul F. Tompkins is especially good at this, as Herzog would admit—and he sometimes seems to heed the cry himself. As Mark O’Connell writes, in a very good essay in the NYRB, “there is no doubt that his real masterpiece is the character known as Werner Herzog.”

On the other hand, the sheer intensity of Herzog’s life can be intimidating: “As I turned the pages of Herzog’s book, and was shunted from one insane episode to the next,” O’Connell writes, “I was gripped by the tightening conviction that my own life was, by comparison, barely a life at all.”

I was not born into a country at war with the world. I have never been shot, or stabbed my own …