I think this is the worst autobiography I have ever read -- and, since I'm not a fan of autobiography to begin with and certainly not of celebrity autobiographies, that's saying quite a lot. It is poorly written, pointless, tasteless, uninformative, and uninteresting.

For instance, though the work is an autobiography, Kinski doesn't even tell us when he was born. To make matters more confusing, he continues that practice of not grounding us in the real world throughout the book. He refers to cinema and stage personages and movie and play titles as if the reader already knew who or what they were, talks about "the war" as if we already knew which one he was in, refers to his friends and family members by first names as if we whould know who they were. In short, he assumes that we already know virtually everything about his life. I don't. And I suspect many others outside theater and cinema circles don't either. Furthermore, the book begins with a melodramatic depiction of his poverty-stricken early years in Poland, including a clumsy effort to cast his mother as a martyr to her maternal love, and ends with an unconvincing, syrupy characterization of himself as a misunderstood father consumed by love of his son, Nanhoi, to whom the book is dedicated.

Most of the rest of the book is simply and literally unbelievable. Kinski casts himself as a satyr and pedophile -- in fact, most of the book is lurid description of his ostensible sexual exploits told in the kind of gratuitously graphic language and detail more appropriate to a porno magazine than a book issued by a reputable publishing house. But he does it all in such a way that one just doesn't believe him. His exploits all seem made up, or, at the very best, exaggerated.

If the book is true, and I seriously doubt that it is, its only redeeming social value is that it might provide some useful insight into a sick imagination.

Kinski has virtually nothing positive to say about any of the plays or films in which he has appeared, about any of the directors or producers with which he has worked, or about any of the other stars -- Marlon Brando and Marlene Deitrich included -- whom he has known. In fairness, though, he characterizes himself much the same. He sketches himself as a lecher and profligate, as a poor father, as a faithless husband and friend, and as a believer in ghosts and palm readers. He seems to take pride, too, in his financial irresponsibility, in the number of times he has contracted veneral diseases, in his contempt for law, in his dalliances with drugs.

In all, I found the book pretty much disgusting. Not only is it rife with pointless, but obviously intentional, obscenity, it is also not contextualized. Besides the lack of dates, there is an almost total absence of detail about the events and people that give a biographical work its value. Nor are there psychological, social, historical or political threads that one can follow through the work, threads that tie the details together, that justify the inclusion of incidents, that give the work unity and coherence. There is, instead, obscenity, vituperation, and a pervasive lack of believability. It is not, as the dust jacket claims, "a frank meditation on the infernal adventures" of an internationally famous film star. Rather, it is disjointed, poorly-conceived and executed, uninteresting, pointless, and it certainly does not prove its title. It is not the kind of thing one ought to waste one's time and money on.

I don't recommend it -- not even as pornography.

Jim Vandergriff

English Instructor

SMSU