Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography

by James Park Sloan

He was hailed as one of the world’s great writers and intellectuals, with novels like The Painted Bird and Being There. He was acclaimed as a heroic survivor and witness of the Holocaust. He won high literary awards, made the bestseller lists, taught and lectured in prestigious universities, was feted in high society, and became an intimate of the rich and famous in a jet-set world of glitter and glamour. Then, in an expose that sent shock waves throughout the intellectual community, he was denounced as a C.I.A. tool, a supreme con man, and a literary fraud, igniting a firestorm of controversy that consumed his reputation and culminated in his headline-making suicide. Now this compelling biography cuts to the complex heart of the truth about the man and the myth that was Jerzy Kosinski. In so doing, it unfolds a story of reality and deception as fascinating, as moving, as painfully honest, and as revelatory as the most gripping of novels. With research that extends from the Poland of Kosinki’s birth and early life to scrupulous examinations of every allegation against Kosinski throughout his career, James Park Sloan, who knew Kosinski for twenty years before his death, leaves no stone unturned and no mask intact. The facts of Kosinski’s horrific childhood Holocaust experiences are sorted out from the fictions of The Painted Bird. Sloan traces Kosinski’s years as an emigre student at Columbia; his marriage to an alcoholic American millionairess; his first literary mark with anti-Communist writings; his award-winning novels and the controversy surrounding their authorship; his triumphant climb to success on an increasingly shaky stairway of half-truths; his compulsive sexual adventuring in New York's erotic underground; his relationship with such figures as Norman Mailer, Roman Polanski, Henry Kissinger, and others in the political and cultural limelight; and the Gotterdammerung of his life and reputation when an article in the Village Voice cast all he had done in doubt despite his denials and his circle’s support. A dazzling investigation of the tantalizing mystery of an extraordinary man and the tangled roots of his artistry, enriched by frank and intimate testimonies of Kosinski’s widow, Kiki, his friends and lovers, his editors and “helpers”, his defenders and detractors, Jerzy Kosinski is intriguing biography, equal to its subject.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature

441 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kosinski : the biggest fakir of all, at last, stripped bare. His "legend" was pushed by NYTs fake news editors, the infamous duo - Rosenthal & Gelb - of the period. They also did same w the Kitty Genovese murder. And you wonder why many good people don't trust the media?? We know "The Painted Bird," which gave GR readers prickly heat, came from a (sick) imagination and was written by a series of assistants. When The Village Voice (NY) questioned its authenticity, NYT engineered a smear campaign against the weekly and its editors. Jerzy himself was a painted bird. He couldnt fly.

[Jt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never read nor heard of a Jerzy Kosinski, even though i was told he was popular in his time, so i didn't really care to read about who he was. But given the fact that the teacher i most admired in my years of being officially taught in the "higher" education system of American Universities was the teacher who wrote this book--i took the time to read it long after i was just a student. And i can truly say, not only as a student of literature, but as a citizen of this world--as Socrates would proclaim he was--I enjoyed it. And I found it remarkable for what it tries to display, an examination of a most complicated form of being which regarded itself as an "author" of his world.

Imagine being thrown to the streets at the age of five from--and by--the protected realm of your "loving" family. Imagine witnessing the apprehension of fascism as it was by those who were for it, and those who only went with it to remain alive. Imagine yourself running. Imagine no time for a book that could explain why it is so...

Did Jerzy Kosinski lie about his life, when he was writing a fiction about it? Maybe he understood that any great tragedy had to include within it the death of its progenitor. Maybe those who wanted to prosecute him for how his ego--so proclaimed as it was in his books--was not who he was, knew what they had to do to react like this against him. Perhaps it was because of his insistence of what he could do--like when he showed off to his college roommate that he could take a brush and rub it vigorously against his erect and throbbing penis--that he didn't really achieve what he wanted to do in his make-believe world. How many among us have gone through surviving fascism at its peak and then found ourselves betraying a socialism that we wanted so much to believe in in the first place? Could we have become the sensual and enigmatic figure Kosinski was to his older, wealthy wife? Could we have entertained the "upper" class of the crust of what was known back then as the New York intelligentsia? Could we have fooled the young college students--or there equivalent "for-hires"--in believing that what they were translating was a "literature" and not what was only being told to them, as they heard it and reported it?

These, and more questions to follow, are presented in this book.

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography tracks the train-wreck of a life of Jerzy Kosinski. It documents Kosinski's life and unpacks his fraudulent claims of being a Holocaust survivior and outlines the intersection of Kosinski's personal life and increasingly unsuccessful writing, which culminated in Kosinski's 1991 suicide. For those of us who've read Kosinski's other works--and thought him to be someone he most definitely was not--this was a fascinating read and indictment of ourselves as naive and ready consumers of survivors' tales.

[False · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never could stand Kosinski as a person or a writer. Ultimately I was proven right when his life and work was exposed as a sham. Why read this then? Curiosity as to why someone would turn their life and their career into a lie. Well written by James Park Sloan.

[Carolyn]

Slanted. He knew JK and was envious it would seem.

[Seamus Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the first 200 pages and then glossed the rest.

[Rowyda Amin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Park Sloan's biography of Kosinski is a fascinating cautionary tale of literary social climbing and the perils of building a reputation on a foundation of lies.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insane!