If you like Herzog’s narrative style in movies you’ll enjoy the book. It’s a very quick read, maybe 3 hours. In some bits I could practically hear him in my head, like this:
“The night is long. The crickets, not caring about war or peace, or who gets to name wars and for what reason, intensify their monotonous screaming, this is their war, perhaps also their peace negotiations, equally unbeknownst to us.”
> Herzog, who has admitted to bending the facts even in his documentaries, notes curtly at the book’s outset, “Most details are factually correct; some are not.”
I read this book a couple months ago. I liked it, but I think that saying most details are factually correct is a stretch. Certainly the major, historically verifiable facts probably are, but by volume it's got to be mostly made up: it's a book set in the mind of someone Herzog probably interviewed briefly, likely through a translator. There's just no way I believe the running narration is based mostly on details Onoda provided, there's just too many of them and they're too specific. Don't get me wrong, it's a neat book, and Herzog has earned so much respect from me that he can claim whatever he wants.
>In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.
"This is a land that God, if He exists, has created in anger. It's the only land where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at what's around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It's the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder."
Two artists can view the exact same landscape and come away with completely different paintings. People who enjoy Herzog's work don't look for a photograph. They look for a mosaic.
I haven’t read the book yet, but typically Herzogs works have a “meta” feel to them, where the main events become more of a backdrop and the camera focuses on the people describing them. I don’t find them to be the best way to learn about a subject, but they’re worth watching anyway.
“The night is long. The crickets, not caring about war or peace, or who gets to name wars and for what reason, intensify their monotonous screaming, this is their war, perhaps also their peace negotiations, equally unbeknownst to us.”