Whenever a master of one artistic medium chooses to work in another, it raises the question of what the new discipline might offer, and what the previous one denied. The Twilight World isn’t Werner Herzog’s first book (nor his last – a memoir is awaiting translation), but it is his first attempt at what might loosely be called a novel. So: why not another film? What does the novel have to offer a man who, 60 years and 70 films deep into his career, can surely film whatever he wants?
Herzog’s preliminary disclaimer offers a clue. “Most details are factually correct,” he tells us, “some are not. What was important to the author was something other than accuracy, some essence he thought he glimpsed when he encountered the protagonist of this story.” It’s this essence, we assume, that Herzog felt his camera wouldn’t catch.
