I read it a couple months ago. I adore it. If you like it, I recommend Of Walking In Ice.
I dropped hints that I wanted that book for Christmas. Here’s hoping it’ll be under the tree.
What is this book? I am intrigued and what is Walking In Ice!?
I want to read this, but first I have to watch Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams.
Just yesterday I saw it in a local film library. Some thoughts by those who have read it would indeed be welcome.
Les Blank’s full BURDEN OF DREAMS journal which was released along with the movie (and some of which is packaged with the boxed set) is really interesting stuff too.
Conquest of the Useless is the name that Herzog has given to the diary that he kept during the making of Fitzcarraldo. I don’t think you really need to watch the film to understand what he’s writing about. It really isn’t entirely about the film, but namely thoughts and events that he had experienced while making the film. And Of Walking on Ice is another Herzog diary which he kept on a trek from Munich to Paris from November to December in 1974. He was going to see a friend who was sick and apparently completed the journey on foot in three weeks.
On page 89 he talks about a crazy guy pulling an invisible thread out of his eye. Hilarious.
The sick friend Herzog treks to in OF WAKING IN ICE is none other than German film critic Lotte Eisner who was basically pronounced dying by the doctors. When friends called Herzog to tell him to get from Munich to her death bed in Paris as fast as he could, he vowed that as long as he traveled on foot, she could not pass away. Lo and behold, he arrived at her doorstep, and she answered his knock, fully recovered. Years later, shortly after Herzog told her she was permitted to die, she finally passed away.
The book is hypnotic. Like Herzog’s films. But it can not be read as a diary (something Herzog makes clear in the prologue)…
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Where can one get a copy of Herzog’s diaries.
^outside of CONQUEST OF THE USELESS and WALKING IN ICE? Not sure. But those are a good place to start.
Tommy
I just got it the other day. I didn’t even know that it existed. A friend got it for me for christmas knowing that I love Fitzcarraldo. It’s pretty interesting because it really isn’t about the making of the film but about things that Herzog had been going through at the time such as impressions of traveling in little native villages and so on. I was wondering what anyone thinks about it, but I haven’t read much of it.