German filmmaker Werner Herzog is known for such documentaries as Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo. He’s also fascinated with what he calls “the limits of language,” as evident in his 1976 documentary how fast auctioneers can talk, How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck. In his new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All (Bookshop|Amazon), Herzog describes his friendship with Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author of Awakenings (Bookshop|Amazon) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Bookshop|Amazon), and includes a lovely passage about when he first spied Sacks reading the Oxford English Dictionary and knew they’d be fast friends. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Dictionary-Lovers, Fast Friends”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Werner Herzog, the acclaimed German filmmaker, is known for such documentaries as Grizzly Man, which was about a conservationist who spent time with bears in the wild.
And Herzog’s new memoir has a title that’s every bit as idiosyncratic as his career.
It’s called Every Man for Himself and God Against All.
And this memoir is striking to me in that Herzog is somebody who becomes deeply passionate about lots of weird esoteric subjects, like, for example, a guy who would spend his time with grizzly bears.
And when Herzog gets passionate about a topic, he simply goes out and makes a movie about it.
For example, when he becomes obsessed with the question of how you might transport a steamship up a hill in the Peruvian jungle, that becomes his movie Fitzcarraldo.
Herzog is also fascinated with what he calls the limits of language.
And you can see that in his 1976 documentary, which is about how fast auctioneers can talk.
It’s called How Much Wood Would Woodchuck Chuck?
And you can find it on YouTube.
It’s less than an hour long, but it’s pretty interesting.
But I bring this up because Herzog is also passionate about the Oxford English Dictionary.
He calls it one of mankind’s greatest cultural achievements.
And he writes, for me, it is the book of books, the one I would take to a desert island.
It is inexhaustible, a miracle.
And he goes on to describe a visit with Oliver Sacks.
That’s the neurologist and author of Awakenings and the man who mistook his wife for a hat.
And I think anybody who loves words will appreciate this part.
He writes, the first time I visited Oliver Sacks on Ward’s Island, northeast of Manhattan, I had mislaid the house number, but knew the name of the little street.
It was evening, wintertime.
The slightly sloping street was icy.
I parked and tiptoed along the icy pavement, looking into every lit-up home.
None of the windows had curtains.
Through one window, I saw a man sprawled on a sofa with one of the hefty volumes of the OED propped on his chest.
I knew that had to be him, and so it was.
Our first subject was the dictionary.
For him as well, it was the book of books.
Isn’t that lovely?
That’s amazing.
First of all, that is totally a New York pastime.
Werner Herzog is a New Yorker at heart because that’s what you do in the evening.
So you kind of peek in windows just to see what your neighbors are like.
Oh, I thought you meant reading the OED.
And also having weird neighbors.
Yes, that’s also very New York.
But yeah, that kind of understanding that a dictionary is an encapsulation of the human experience, that’s a truth.
That’s a fundamental truth.
And if you see somebody sprawled on a sofa with a print version of the OED, you know they’ve got to be a kindred spirit.
Thank you for sharing that passage, Martha.
That book again is?
That book again is Werner Herzog’s memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All.
We’ll link to that from our website.
We’d love to hear what you’re reading.
Martha and I are always interested in, there’s a little more room on the bedside table for maybe a couple more books.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
