KOSINSKI, Jerzy Nikodem

(b. 14 June 1933 in Lodz, Poland; d. 3 May 1991 in New York City), writer, celebrity intellectual, and international spokesperson whose autobiographical novels in the 1960s created controversy and broke ground in style and lurid contents.

Kosinski's life presents two sagas: the building of a legend, climaxing in the 1960s, and the collapse of the legend during the 1980s. Kosinski spread exaggerated stories about his past and insisted on the truth of many fictional events in his books, which earlier sources accepted uncritically and which still contribute to confusion about his life. His parents, Moses (Mojzesz) and Elzbieta (Liniecka) Lewinkopf, were well off, resourceful and cultured—though Elzbieta was an amateur musician, not a concert pianist as her son maintained, and Moses was a manager skilled in languages but not a professor of linguistics. The Lewinkopfs, secularized Jews, recognized the Nazi threat to their native Poland, and in late 1939 they acquired papers changing their last name to Kosinski and the father's first name to Mieczyslaw. Kosinski was their only biological child.

Unlike the protagonist in his novel The Painted Bird, Kosinski was not separated from his family during World War II; he did hide out in rural poverty, socially isolated from others who might see that he was circumcised or otherwise guess his true background. The family adopted an infant named Henryk in 1942. In July 1944 the Red Army captured Dabrowa, the Polish town where the Kosinskis had settled, and Kosinski was befriended by two Soviet soldiers. In 1947 the family returned to Lodz, where Kosinski attended high school. He then did some award-winning work in photography with Jerzy Neugebauer. Kosinski attended the University of Lodz from 1950 to 1955, receiving M.A. degrees in history and political science.

Kosinski went to New York City in December 1957, knowing little English but much about influencing people and succeeding in bureaucracies. Through a Ford Foundation Fellowship, he studied at Columbia University (1958–1964) and at the New School for Social Research (1962–1965) for a graduate degree in sociology. During those years three of Kosinski's nonfiction books were published. He also edited and translated a volume of American writings in sociology, intended as a textbook for Polish graduate students. Doubleday published two interview-based studies of Soviet culture, The Future Is Ours, Comrade (1960) and No Third Path (1962). The former was very well received. The books were highly informed and sympathetic to the Soviet people, yet highly critical of the system—perfect for a cold war American audience. Kosinski, who wrote these two books under the pen name Joseph Novak, offered different explanations for the pseudonym; years later, research revealed that for both books Kosinski employed writing assistance that amounted to translation.

Paradoxically, this self-defined outsider yearned for acceptance by the wealthy and well known, and he worked assiduously to charm them and promote himself. In 1960 he met Mary Hayward Weir, an art collector and the wealthy widow of a steel company chief executive officer; she was in her mid-forties, while he was eighteen years younger. They married on 11 January 1962. Despite Kosinski's flagrant infidelities and her alcoholism, they remained married until 1966 and were friends until her death in 1968. With her, Kosinski traveled through the United States and around the globe, making literary and social contacts.

No Third Path did not succeed as Kosinski had hoped, and he turned to fiction. As early as 1958 Kosinski told altered stories of his childhood. In 1963 he began notes for a novel, augmenting his memories with research in books about folklife and historical context. He also engaged several editors/translators to help with his English. In 1964 the Kosinskis attended a dinner with Dorothy de Santillana, a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin; she was intrigued by Kosinski's stories and was offered a manuscript, which she assumed was a memoir. During the publishing process Kosinski backtracked, and The Painted Bird was published in 1965 as autobiographical fiction. That same year, Kosinski became an American citizen.

No matter what its genesis, The Painted Bird stands as a literary accomplishment, simple in style and bold in its depiction of sex and violence. Because of horrific events the young protagonist undergoes, some critics found the novel anti-Polish. Actually, it represented Kosinski's view of all humanity, and in later editions the sole reference to Poland is changed to "Eastern Europe." Despite controversy, the book won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in 1966 and landed Kosinski a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1967–1968.

Steps, Kosinski's second novel, solidified his reputation. Published in 1968, it won the National Book Award in 1969. Steps further melds autobiography, self-made legend, and total fiction in its loose, anecdotal tale of seemingly random events in the life of a young man who emigrates from the Soviet Union to the United States. Its sex and violence were even more extreme, but by then the culture had caught up to Kosinski, and taboo-breaking had become laudable, even fashionable. The decade ended with Kosinski on the rise, his work acknowledged and his presence familiar from Park Avenue dinner parties to television's Tonight Show. Wesleyan and Princeton Universities gave Kosinski his first academic appointments. On one dark note, Kosinski had been invited to the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, but did not show up, on the night of 9 August 1969, when all five people in the house were killed by Charles Manson's gang of followers.

Kosinski's reputation would climax with his third novel, Being There, published in 1971, which was the basis of a movie starring Peter Sellers in 1979. Kosinski served an important term as president of PEN, a highly prestigious and influential writers' organization, from 1973 to 1975. Later novels, such as The Devil Tree (1973), Blind Date (1977), and Passion Play (1979), were successful, but critics found the style less revolutionary and were suspicious of the increasing occupation with the rich and famous. In the 1980s writings by Jerome Klinkowitz, Geoffrey Stokes, and Eliot Fremont-Smith of the Village Voice, and others began to undo the Kosinski legend, adding charges of possible Central Intelligence Agency involvement. Despite signs of overcoming the ordeal—Kosinski married Katherina von Fraunhofer on 15 February 1987 and was becoming increasingly at home in Hollywood—Kosinski killed himself in his New York apartment, using alcohol, barbiturates, and suffocation by a plastic bag.

As the indignation among biographers and critics cools, readers are left with Kosinski's undeniable accomplishments. His position as an intellectual Polish émigré lent him authority during the cold war. His novel The Painted Bird became a favorite among counterculture college students. Kosinski, the eternal outsider who traveled everywhere, provides a potpourri of 1960s culture in his life and fiction. Equally at home with sex club denizens and New York Times editors, international intellectuals and movie stars, Kosinski lived and recorded many of the joys and terrors of World War II, the cold war, and the counterculture revolution.

All studies written before 1982, and many after, are helpful but must be read in light of later research. The best-documented and most balanced source is James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography (1996). Works of partial utility, including literary critical insight, include Jack Hicks, In the Singer's Temple: The Romance and Terror of Jerzy Kosinski (1981), and Norman Lavers, Jerzy Kosinski (1982). Barbara Tepa Lupack, ed., Critical Essays on Jerzy Kosinski (1998), offers an invaluable collection of reviews and essays.

Bernadette Lynn Bosky