ATWT: Let me ask you about this book you have coming out, “The Conquest of the Useless”.WH: Ah yes, that’s a book, a prose book that’s going to be released in the summer by Harper Collins. The translation is just finished and I’m working on the translation, I’m doing some corrections and modifications. But it’s good that you mention it, because this book is certainly better than all of my films together.
ATWT: Really? Why do you say?
WH: When it’s out, read it and you will know.
In an interview with AJ Schnack, Werner Herzog discusses his upcoming book, Conquest of the Useless, which will be released on June 30. According to Amazon, its subtitle is Reflections on the Making of Fitzcarraldo, which would suggest that it’s an English translation/update of a version of Herzog’s diaries from the making of that film which was already published in Italy.
“Conquistadors of the useless” is a pet phrase of Herzog’s, popping up in Herzog and Herzog in reference to his determination to actually move the boat over the mountain in the making of Fitzcarraldo, rather than fake it or take it apart and move it in pieces. The phrase most recently appeared in print when he used it to describe “[most] everyone who climbs a steep cliff and climbs a building made of steel and glass,” when two men tried to coincidentally tried to scale the New York Times building the same day Herzog appeared there in coversation with Jonathan Demme.
