Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski” as Want to Read:
Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski
by
Klaus Kinski
This autobiography recounts the life of the German actor Klaus Kinski. It tells of his tortured childhood in the poverty of pre-war Berlin - starving, stealing, perpetually frost-bitten - his conscription, at the age of 16, into the German army, the last of World War II, and on through his rise to international stardom as a film actor.
Paperback
,
336 pages
Published
July 1st 1997
by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
(first published 1996)
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Kinski Uncut
,
please sign up
.
Be the first to ask a question about Kinski Uncut
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,254)
I mean, he tried to eat a live cow.
view 2 comments
Dec 14, 2007
Jacob
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Pregnant women
This book ... is amazing. It's pure uncut megalomania. According to this book, not only is Klaus Kinsky the smartest guy in the room, he also has sex with almost every single woman that gets mentioned. This is not an exaggeration. His thinking about himself is so bombastic, egomaniacal, and inflated to such drastic proportions, that the book becomes a sort of mythic comedy. The Klaus Kinsky of reality writing the Klaus Kinsky of the imagination takes on the proportions of Blakean mythology in wh
...more
“These girls can’t be picky; they fuck with men of all races from all four corners or the world and they probably catch every conceivable kind of V.D. But I not only screw them without a rubber, I also eat our their pussies. I know its crazy. But I want to love them, I want them to feel that I love them and that I need love. That I am dying for love.”
i read this book after watching herzog’s my best fiend . herzog claims that the book was largely fabricated to generate sales. aside from all that-- ...more
i read this book after watching herzog’s my best fiend . herzog claims that the book was largely fabricated to generate sales. aside from all that-- ...more
Klaus Kinski slept with everyone in Europe, including his own mother. Also, he was an actor.
(Werner Herzog maintains, as do many close friends of the late Kinski, that this autobiography is almost pure fiction. Aren't they all, though?)
(Werner Herzog maintains, as do many close friends of the late Kinski, that this autobiography is almost pure fiction. Aren't they all, though?)
trashy, depraved, and full of shit. i couldn't recommend it more!
UPDATE 11/17/13: Amazing Kinski footage added in comment section below review....
This is a treat. Kinski in his own words. Kinski Uncut is a portrait of mania, ego, and rage; all of these factors combined to produce one of the cinema's greatest actors. Sure he appeared in a lot of crappy films, but he was always the reason to sit through them. And the gems he did appear in are timeless: Doctor Zhivago, For a Few Dollars More, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, Venus in Furs, and ...more
This is a treat. Kinski in his own words. Kinski Uncut is a portrait of mania, ego, and rage; all of these factors combined to produce one of the cinema's greatest actors. Sure he appeared in a lot of crappy films, but he was always the reason to sit through them. And the gems he did appear in are timeless: Doctor Zhivago, For a Few Dollars More, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, Venus in Furs, and ...more
Jan 29, 2009
Daniel
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who can't get enough crazy kinski clips on Youtube
You can basically open this book and quote something awesome.
"I hold on to a street light and think that this is the end. I pull out the kitchen knife and stick it down my throat like a sword swallower. And then it happens. The boil breaks! And I puke half a liter of pus into the gutter. Now I'm rid of everything and my pains are gone."
"When Barlog refuses to cast me as the lead in Ah, Wilderness! I smash the windowpanes of the Schlossparktheater. My one-year contract is not renewed. But I wou ...more
"I hold on to a street light and think that this is the end. I pull out the kitchen knife and stick it down my throat like a sword swallower. And then it happens. The boil breaks! And I puke half a liter of pus into the gutter. Now I'm rid of everything and my pains are gone."
"When Barlog refuses to cast me as the lead in Ah, Wilderness! I smash the windowpanes of the Schlossparktheater. My one-year contract is not renewed. But I wou ...more
Nobody mentions his daughter, Nastassja Kinski. (I always wanted to give her one from the heart.) Can you imagine spending the first 10 years of your life with Klaus, then starting a relationship with Roman Polanski when you were 16. Strangely, their relationship ended before she turned 20.
Mar 03, 2008
Mer
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Herzog fans, Kinski fans, hairy palmed weirdos
Diary of a gibbering batshit insane sex-crazed madman. Just... absolutely ridiculous. I suppose if you're not already a fan of the late, great Klaus Kinski, you won't enjoy this half as much as I did.
Times have changed since a major publishing house issued Klaus Kinski’s
Kinski Uncut
, and maybe not changed for the better. Initially released in 1988 under the title
All I Need Is Love
, the German actor’s seething, potty-mouthed autobiography is apt to estrange any readers offended by graphic depictions of wanton boning and a blanket context of objectification that reduces female human beings to the sum of their orifices and secondary sexual characteristics and dumps the males of the species in
...more
Portrait of the actor as a crazed sex maniac?
Dang. It can be said that this book is the messy result of Klaus Kinski’s throbbing egomania. Insane, relentless, and disgusting. Kinski recounts his numerous sexual exploits. Somehow he slept with all women that he encountered. Of course, Kinski also recounts his squalor-filled youth (bedbug infested), his acting experiences (he only accepted big cash), his hatred for directors (Herzog bears the brunt, duh), and his marriages (though he rarely went i ...more
Dang. It can be said that this book is the messy result of Klaus Kinski’s throbbing egomania. Insane, relentless, and disgusting. Kinski recounts his numerous sexual exploits. Somehow he slept with all women that he encountered. Of course, Kinski also recounts his squalor-filled youth (bedbug infested), his acting experiences (he only accepted big cash), his hatred for directors (Herzog bears the brunt, duh), and his marriages (though he rarely went i ...more
The man's writing is just as flamboyant and exaggerated as his acting was. The penultimate egoist, this book reads like a ploy to perpetuate his image, or the image he would like everyone to regard. Half the stuff I just don't believe - he comes off as a sociopath who only randomly excuses his behavior because he has "so much love to give" - but "love" might be a mistranslation of "sex" - because I didn't see any love at all: to his wives, his children, his friends (of which he never mentions).
...more
Oct 15, 2013
Chris
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
hedonists, movie buffs
The German actor Klaus Kinski, best known in his roles in Werner Herzog's films, is one of the most outrageous characters in film. His autobiography is mostly filled with the explicit details of his many sexual exploits, exposition on his feelings of isolation and misery, and insults directed toward some well-known film makers.
It's a shocking story--and not for the squeamish--but it's a great companion piece for anyone who was enthralled by Kinski's performances in movies like Fitzcarraldo , Agu ...more
It's a shocking story--and not for the squeamish--but it's a great companion piece for anyone who was enthralled by Kinski's performances in movies like Fitzcarraldo , Agu ...more
An autobiography so dirty, so depraved that it would reduce a book club comprised of Henry Miller, Phillip Roth and the Marquis De Sade to a series of blushing embarrassed silences. Just when you start to tire of his endless (possibly, hopefully delusional) recounting of his sexual conquests, he'll toss off a description of coupling with such breathtaking scatalogical or bestial originality, or sometimes both, you just have to chuckle and tip your hat. And I haven't even gotten to the crazy yet.
...more
Still reading. Every page is full of cunts, twats, fucks, pussies, and general ragings against all the imbeciles populating Kinski's life. (And I'm reading it in translation! Can you imagine the translator trying to decide which slang for female reproductive organ to use in each instance? Good lord.) If he doesn't start talking about Herzog soon, I'm giving up.
[Update: Didn't finish. Gross. For Kinski completists only, maybe.]
[Update: Didn't finish. Gross. For Kinski completists only, maybe.]
When I purchased this book, I thought of it as a guilty pleasure. Now I just feel guilty that I'm wasting my time on this trash instead of reading actual literature.
Mar 23, 2011
Mariel
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Conquistadors of the useless
Recommended to Mariel by:
Nosferatu's who get it on more than Cap'n Kirk
I'm not going to top
Lucy Ross's review
. Goodreaders from 2007 and 2008 are so annoying. They get in there and write all the good reviews, have all the good ideas, etc. before all of us late bloomers get the chance. It isn't fair. Does anyone else have that problem? I have that problem.
He DID try to eat a live cow. I hope that was true. Please let that be true!
There's a scene in Tom Dicillo's film Box of Moonlight that describes how I feel about Klaus Kinski and his book. Sam Rockwell plays thi ...more
He DID try to eat a live cow. I hope that was true. Please let that be true!
There's a scene in Tom Dicillo's film Box of Moonlight that describes how I feel about Klaus Kinski and his book. Sam Rockwell plays thi ...more
This goes on "fiction" as well as "memoirs" because it is so over the top, overwritten, and obviously fictionalized (the latter has been corroborated by friends and collaborators). That said, it is fascinating writing, a melding of Kinski's own storied personality and his image of himself, it is an austere and gripping work of self-mythologizing with some passionate reflections on acting and some chords of tenderness later in the book as he addresses fatherhood and the difficulty of relationship
...more
Without a doubt one of the most outrageous "autobiographies" I've come across, this is really just a detailed inventory of the multitudes of women Kinski claims to have bedded. The descriptions of incest, copulating on a church altar with a virgin, and sex with a giantess whose back he would scale and hair he would hang on to so as not to fall, indicate that this is autobiography as performance art. Personally, I take great joy in knowing that Kinski was equal parts crazy and brilliant. Best pur
...more
Really disappointing. I keep reading on, hoping it will turn into something I want to know about this tortured, gifted actor. There is just so much in his career he could have written about extensively (Paths of Glory, Nosferatu (in detail), Fitzcarraldo (in detail). I wanted to know what made him tick. Instead, I am reading this big bowl of crazy (i.e. having sex with anyone and everything) which borders on pathology (or crosses the border.)Every damn page he is having sex with something or som
...more
By far the most ridiculous autobiography I've ever read. So exaggerated and unbelievable that I was physically exhausted after I plowed through it. The guy was fucking insane in the best sense of the word. Too bad this thing is going for $40+ on Amazon, because I'd love to own it. I'm going to pull quotes from it if and when I'm ever invited to toast a friend's wedding.
Startling. His claims are completely absurd and graphic. There is a photo of him laughing, holding the massive handwritten manuscript of this book and a puppy licking his face.
I have a party game for this book! Flip it open to any random page and read aloud. The passage is sure to horrify and delight your audience.
After about 20 pages I thought "this might be the best book ever written". By the time it got to 50 pages I was bored shitless. There's only so long that I could read a man basically making up that he had sex with loads of people and trying to claim that he's amazing all the time. I kind of got the main idea and put it down. Didn't make it to the end. I mean, the guy claims to have fucked his own sister. Once you've done that early on, everything else is a bit less sensational- so "I done a sex
...more
Jesus. One can only take so much of Kinski's blathering. I might just skip forward to the parts where he tears into Herzog.
The greatest autobiography ever written. It may be complete bulls***, but it's so entertaining I don't care.
This book taught me to be more assertive.
An insane, megalomanaical, pornographic memoir written by a deranged, unhinged, ungrateful lunatic, most of whose claims one must assume are utter bullshit.
So, highly recommended.
It's hard not to read this with one's jaw not on the floor. That any one man could be have an ego so large is difficult to comprehened. Though ostensibly the memoir of a famous actor, this is more the memoir of a man who fucks every single woman he ever meets, and who also, tangentially, and to his endless horror, must ...more
So, highly recommended.
It's hard not to read this with one's jaw not on the floor. That any one man could be have an ego so large is difficult to comprehened. Though ostensibly the memoir of a famous actor, this is more the memoir of a man who fucks every single woman he ever meets, and who also, tangentially, and to his endless horror, must ...more
Fikk denne anbefalt av en litt rufsete kollega, som mente det var på høy tid at den ble oversatt til norsk. Ved endt lesning er jeg litt i tvil. Spennende skjebne, bevares, men noe stort litterært verk er det ikke. Demonstrerer hvordan selv det å lese om et utsvevende seksualliv kan bli monotont og direkte kjedelig i lengden.
Mar 01, 2010
Erik
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
nonfiction-for-a-fiction-guy
Generally biographies are not my thing, but this one came highly recommended mainly due to the fact that I'm a huge Herzog fan; particularly the ones where Kinski is the starring character. Werner always claimed that most of the things Kinski mentioned here were total fabrications; simply because he was trying to live up to his madman stereotype, (and also of course, because he wanted to sell his book). Wild narcissistic fits of rage. Cursing the day Werner Herzog was ever born. Lies about livin
...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
