A show-stealing villain in spaghetti westerns and slasher\u00a0flicks with titles such as Schizoid and Psychopath, the German actor Klaus Kinski \u2013 \u201ca demented Teutonic version of Dennis Hopper\u201d, as one tribute had it \u2013 is known best for\u00a0his testy collaboration with Werner Herzog, whose 1982 film Fitzcarraldo put Kinski in the title role, lugging a steamship over the Andes. A terror on set as well as on screen, he was offered a part in Indiana Jones but told Steven Spielberg the Raiders of the Lost Ark script was a \u201cpile of shit\u201d.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Myers\u2019s new novel plunges us into Kinski\u2019s fevered mind during one of his last performances, a\u00a0recorded solo stage show in West Berlin in 1971, where he delivered a ferocious monologue as Jesus, \u201cthe freest and most modern of men, who preferred to be massacred than rot alive with all the others\u201d. Showcased in a documentary released in 2008 by Peter Geyer, the act descended into chaos, Kinski arguing with hecklers before ending his monologue in a near-empty auditorium.<\/p>\n
The book melds Kinski\u2019s on-the-record words with imagined second-person recollection about, among other things, his capture by allied forces as a German conscript, a spell\u00a0in\u00a0a psychiatric clinic, and his innumerable sexual conquests. Words\u00a0scatter randomly across the page in a riot of salty vituperation: Kinski denounces \u201cbeatnik Christian youth \u2026\u00a0so easily offended\u201d and fantasises about shoving the letters of\u00a0his name \u201cdown the gagging gullet\u00a0of history\u201d.<\/p>\n
Cut half a century later to West Yorkshire during lockdown, where an\u00a0unnamed writer decides to write a\u00a0book \u201cabout the dead German actor Klaus Kinski\u201d. The project looks unsaleable from the off, not least because Kinski\u2019s eldest daughter, Pola,\u00a0accused him of sexually abusing her. There\u2019s also the fact that \u201cthe writer\u201d \u2013 let\u2019s call him Benjamin Myers \u2013 owes his publisher a \u201clong, era-spanning historical novel concerning an English saint\u201d, and has already spent the advance (this is a reference to 2023\u2019s Goldsmiths prize-winning Cuddy<\/a>). Yet\u00a0the \u201cdark and forceful energy\u201d of Kinski\u2019s Jesus keeps drawing him back to online footage. By the time Myers clocks that the actor was 45 in 1971 \u2013 the age Myers is in 2021 \u2013 \u201ca psychic door of communication [is] opened by the key of coincidence\u201d, and it would basically be rude not to write the book.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Myers lays bare his workings: biscuit breaks, dog walks, his battle with anxiety and professional self-sabotage<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If the sections in Kinski\u2019s voice recall David Peace\u2019s The Damned Utd, a more fanciful comparison might be Samantha Harvey\u2019s space novel Orbital, likewise fed by a lockdown YouTube habit. Unlike Harvey, Myers lays bare his workings: biscuit breaks, dog walks, the books he skimmed for research, the ones he didn\u2019t even open, to say nothing of his battle with anxiety and professional self-sabotage, of which the decision to write a book in the voice of an alleged child abuser is one example (\u201cany fully functioning, well-rounded individual would simply not be considering Klaus Kinski at length during such a tumultuous time\u201d).<\/p>\n Yet when the writer pictures the type of novel likely to go down better \u2013 \u201ca story about a young woman and her horse, perhaps\u201d \u2013 the hesitation risks looking disingenuous; all the more so, once he lays into a younger generation of readers \u201cmore boring than their parents\u201d, preferring their artists well behaved and \u201crelatable\u201d. Later, Myers wonders if Kinski\u2019s self-scripted Jesus monologue wasn\u2019t itself a little boring \u2013 an insight with potential to torpedo the entire project \u2013 but the implications of this thought are swiftly neutralised by instead dissing modern celebrity authors for not staying in their lane.<\/p>\n In other words, this fitfully engaging narrative experiment isn\u2019t really about Kinski or even Myers so much as the 21st-century cultural marketplace. As lapel-grabbing rants give way to downbeat musings, the book exerts a strange charm, ushering us behind the scenes of its own making. \u201cI live freely,\u201d Kinski boasts, unlike people \u201cstuck in \u2026\u00a0dismal jobs\u201d. Amid the keynote disaffection, you ultimately sense contentment, even joy, that he\u2019s not the\u00a0only one able to say so.<\/p>\n