Dictionary-Lovers, Fast Friends

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.