Benjamin Myers on Jesus Christ Kinski: Berlin, Biography, and Bad Behaviour
Update: 2025-10-21
Description
On this episode, we were joined by Benjamin Myers, the prize-winning writer and journalist, to discuss his new novel Jesus Christ Kinski.
It’s November 1971 in Berlin, and actor Klaus Kinski performs a one-man show that quickly descends into chaos and recrimination. Fifty years later, a writer snowed in during the pandemic winter of 2021 becomes obsessed with the performance and compelled to write something like a biography of the tortured figure.
Recalling Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage—a book about trying and failing to write about D.H. Lawrence—Myers ventures into similar territory, offering a mercilessly funny look at one of the twentieth century’s most volatile public figures.
We talk with Benjamin about Kinski’s modern relevance as both artist and self-mythologising provocateur; the line between genius and narcissism, madness and evil; and how today’s culture might have treated a man like him. As a music journalist, Benjamin also reflects on the decline of the “rock star” persona in an age that expects entertainers to model good behaviour.
Hosted by Ryan Edgington and Matt Hennessey.
It’s November 1971 in Berlin, and actor Klaus Kinski performs a one-man show that quickly descends into chaos and recrimination. Fifty years later, a writer snowed in during the pandemic winter of 2021 becomes obsessed with the performance and compelled to write something like a biography of the tortured figure.
Recalling Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage—a book about trying and failing to write about D.H. Lawrence—Myers ventures into similar territory, offering a mercilessly funny look at one of the twentieth century’s most volatile public figures.
We talk with Benjamin about Kinski’s modern relevance as both artist and self-mythologising provocateur; the line between genius and narcissism, madness and evil; and how today’s culture might have treated a man like him. As a music journalist, Benjamin also reflects on the decline of the “rock star” persona in an age that expects entertainers to model good behaviour.
Hosted by Ryan Edgington and Matt Hennessey.
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