The book is nonlinear and exuberantly free-associative, less a narrative than an extravagant demonstration of sensibility.

I don’t believe a word of the filmmaker Werner Herzog’s new memoir.

There is a great deal in this book about Mr. Herzog’s childhood and youth, a convention that can be dull, but not when the life is like this one.

Provides insight into Herzog’s films. It is less of a how-to guide — there are few technical details on the process of filmmaking — and more a deep, often tangent-filled dive into the director’s thought process and his inspiration.

Isn’t a cynical book, struck with relating the brutal indignity of sacrificing one’s all for the demands of art, but it’s a visceral one, ripe with passages devastating for their candor and for the beauty of their coincidence. Living is dangerous and revelatory and overwhelming as Herzog remembers his life, as if everything he tells us he’s witnessed first-hand with such clarity is too unbelievable to be confined to the life of one man.

This autobiography reminds us once again that he is a fearsome and strange force.

Herzog’s memoir is really an autobiography, since it covers his entire life and delves into his family history. It comes as a surprise that, after recounting a life full of astonishing adventures and unique achievements, he closes on a pessimistic note..

Magisterial.

Like his films, Herzog’s memoir is a decidedly nontraditional piece of storytelling.

Herzog in all his extravagant, perspicacious glory.