The Twilight World: Discover the first novel from the iconic filmmaker Werner Herzog

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In 1999, before a public dialogue with critic Roger Ebert at the Walker Art Center, Herzog read a new manifesto, which he dubbed Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema. [55] Subtitled "Lessons of Darkness", after his film of that name, the 12-point declaration began: "Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants." Herzog explained that "There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization" and that "facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable." [56] Ebert later wrote of its significance: "For the first time, it fully explained his theory of 'ecstatic truth. '" [57] In 2017, Herzog wrote a six-point addendum to the manifesto, [58] prompted by a question about "truth in an age of alt-facts". [59] Herzog, W. (2008). What was worst. The Virginia Quarterly Review, 84(1), 197–198. https://www.vqronline.org/vqr-symposium/what-was-worst Werner Herzog Reads His Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema". Walker Art Center. 30 April 1999 . Retrieved 8 August 2017. Time, time and the jungle. The jungle does not recognise time. They are like two alienated siblings who will have nothing to do with each other, who communicate, if at all, only in the form of contempt.” Schillinger, Liesl (10 June 2022). "Two Men of the Jungle Meet in Herzog's First Novel". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 20 June 2022.

Dang, Simon. "Watch Out, Ridley: Werner Herzog's Gertrude Bell Film Starring Naomi Watts Hoping To Shoot In The Fall". IndieWire . Retrieved 25 November 2012. Institute, The British Film. "BFI – Sight & Sound – Film of the Month: Invincible (2001)". old.bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 3 August 2012 . Retrieved 20 August 2018.Herzog was born Werner Stipetić in Munich, Nazi Germany, to Elisabeth Stipetić, an Austrian of Croatian descent, and Dietrich Herzog, a German. When Werner was two weeks old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang in the Chiemgau Alps, after the house next to theirs was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in World War II. [7] In Sachrang, Werner grew up without running water, a flushing toilet, or a telephone. He recounted, "We had no toys, we had no tools", and said that there was a sense of anarchy, as all the children's fathers were absent. [8] He never saw films, and did not even know of the existence of cinema until a traveling projectionist came by the one-room schoolhouse in Sachrang. [9] In the winter of 1974, upon learning of the impending death of his friend Lotte H. Eisner, Herzog began a three week pilgrimage, traversing the route from Munich to Paris on foot. He believed this act of devotion would prolong Eisner's life. During these travels Herzog kept a diary which would eventually be published as Of Walking in Ice. Does Werner Herzog Have a College Degree? Answer". www.wishmachinery.com . Retrieved 8 November 2017. Chitwood, Adam. "Jude Law Joins Robert Pattinson and Naomi Watts in Werner Herzog's QUEEN OF THE DESERT". Collider . Retrieved 25 November 2012. 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

In his first novel, Herzog tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II.Werner Herzog: "You can learn the essentials of filmmaking in two weeks" ". Film Industry Network. 30 May 2016. It is not healthy if you circle too much around your own navel. And it is not good to recall all the trauma of your childhood. It's good to forget them. It's good to bury them. Not in all cases, but in most cases. So psychoanalysis is doing that. I do not deny that it is good and necessary in a very few cases. Yes, I admit it, but it's not my thing. But I keep telling men ... "Rather dead than going to a psychiatrist." But at the same time, "Rather dead than ever wearing a toupee." My hair is thinning and it's just accepted as it is. ... Women would immediately agree with me. You cannot live with a man who starts to wear a toupee and thinks he's handsome now and rejuvenated. Werner Herzog moved to Los Angeles with his wife in the late nineties. "Wherever you look is an immense depth, a tumult that resonates with me. New York is more concerned with finance than anything else. It doesn't create culture, only consumes it; most of what you find in New York comes from elsewhere. Things actually get done in Los Angeles. Look beyond the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and a wild excitement of intense dreams opens up; it has more horizons than any other place. There is a great deal of industry in the city and a real working class; I also appreciate the vibrant presence of the Mexicans." [24] Later career: 2006 onwards [ edit ] Herzog is internationally acclaimed as a maker of films peopled by obsessive characters struggling in wild, uncontrollable settings. . . . [His] first novel is no different. . . . Through spare language and minimal detail that recall Herzog’s screenwriting technique, together with great leaps through time, the novel spans the full 29 years of Onoda’s remarkable story while keeping the focus on him. . . . A brief but powerful and noteworthy addition to the résumé of a master storyteller; fans of Herzog’s films will see the filmmaker’s cinematic fingerprints all over this absurdist, if absorbing, story.”― Library Journal

Sin dall'inizio, Herzong precisa che non tutto è basato interamente sui fatti: lui ha a cuore l'essenza della storia. Come scrivevo prima, Herzog procede per sottrazione, andando al cuore delle cose: “Ciò che stava a cuore all’autore, infatti, come dovette riconoscere durante il suo incontro con il protagonista, era altro: l’essenza della storia.” There’s an element of the romantic as well in Herzog’s jungle survival tales, where the universe boils down to individuals wrestling with nature and being shaped by it in turn. . . . This is why Herzog loves the jungle, for its capacity to show us at our most abject and our most inspiring.” — The New Republic Werner Herzog's Wondrous Novel of Nothingness in the Jungle". The New Yorker. 16 June 2022 . Retrieved 20 June 2022. Werner Herzog praises new 'Star Wars' series 'Mandalorian' – YouTube". www.youtube.com. Archived from the original on 11 December 2021 . Retrieved 17 July 2020.Sure, this is dressed as a "novel", so I guess readers were supposed to immerse themselves into Onodas situation - but that was impossible, because the language is sparse and the chapters are both brief and without much emotional context. Why? Because this is written, in my opinion, as a documentary piece. The text, as it stands, should rightfully have been accompanied by documentary videos. Since it wasn't, Herzog wrote his brief scenes but only he saw the images. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Here just offshore from bloody Okinawa, the town No. 1 carrying part of the Japanese surrender delegation... Cronin, Paul; Werner Herzog (2002). Herzog on Herzog. London: Faber and Faber. pp.vii–viii. ISBN 978-0-571-20708-4. truffaut. Werner Herzog to be President of the Jury of the 60th Berlinale". berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 25 November 2009 . Retrieved 22 December 2009. I went into this novel knowing the case of Onoda Hiroo, the Japanese guerilla soldier who kept on fighting in WWII for 30 years after the peace talks were officially done - because he never got the memo.