Talk:Jerzy Kosiński

Ban on Kosinki's works

Several comments and clarifications regarding the paragraph that mentions the ban on "Painted Bird" in Poland:

1. All of Kosinki's works were banned in Communist Poland and in 1989, when Communism in Poland was overthrown, "Painted Bird" and his other books were immediately released both in English and in Polish translations.

2. The paragraph seems to suggest that there is a connection between the release of Kosinski's biography written by Joanna Siedlecka and the ban on "Painted Bird" in Communist Poland. This can't be true, as Siedlecka's book was released in 1993, 4 years after Communism in Poland was overthrown and "Painted Bird" for the first time published in Poland and 2 years after Kosinski's death.

3. The paragraph implies that the reason for banning "Painted Bird" under Communism was its alleged historical inaccuracy. I assume that historical inaccuracy refers to the accusation that in the book Kosinski grossly exaggerated the brutality and cruelty of Polish peasantry under German occupation and that his vision is not representative of reality. Regardless whether this accusation is true or not, it is very arguable whether this particular accusation was the reason, or even the main reason among many, for banning the book. From his very first book, "The future is ours, Comrade", Kosinki was bitterly criticising Communism and was put on the black list in the whole Communist Block by the time he wrote "Painted Bird", in which he further criticised the Communist system. In such circumstances, it is difficult to determine what were the exact or main reasons for the ban on Painted Bird in the Communist Block.

4. In Communist Poland there existed no private publishing houses and banning a book simply meant that it was not never released. A lot of books released in the Free World, that were not "Communist" enough, were available only in Underground circulation.

5. For the reasons written above, I suggest putting the information about the ban on Kosinski's books in Communist Poland in a separate paragraph, not in the same paragraph as the one that mentions Siedlecka, as it's misleading.

6. Did peaseants exist in Europe in the 20th century. Were they not a form of feudal represion that had ended at the very latest with the end of WW1 ? I propose the use of the term people in its place.

Joanna Siedlecka's expose biography of Jerzy Kosinski

An excerpt from the article:

Criticisms arose, when the public was confronted with another picture of the life of Kosinski during the Holocaust, as described in the book by unauthorized Polish biographer Joanna Siedlecka. In response, Kosinski stated that he never meant for The Painted Bird to be an autobiography, but defended the historical accuracy of the book nevertheless.

Comments:

1. Kosinski couldn't have responded to the biography written by Siedlecka as it was released in 1993, 2 years after Kosinski's death.

I doubt in it. I personally read the book in the high school around 1984, advised by Polish language teacher and my peers. I had impression that critics of Kosinski were under ban, but I might have been wrong. Cautious 03:01, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• I've double-checked it, Cautious -- I am absolutely certain that in Poland "The Painted Bird" was officially published for the first time in 1989[1] (ISBN 8307019591) and Siedlecka's biography of Kosinski in 1994[2] (ISBN 8385458042) (I had made a little mistake though, I thought that it was 1993, but it definitely wasn't earlier than that). Maybe in 1984 you read someone else's illegal essay on Kosinski? Or maybe a Siedlecka's illegally distributed draft? In Communist Poland banned books often circulated underground. You had an amazing teacher, Cautious, if he recommended such a book to you. If it was indeed Siedlecka's underground publication, it's surprising to me that Siedlecka collected information or wrote about Kosinski as early as 1984. Anyway, my main point is that the "average Polish Joe" heard about "The Painted Bird" in 1989, after Communism collapsed, and the first open discussion in the Polish free media took place in 1994, after Siedlecka's official publication. A Polish translation of the James Sloan's biography was published in 1997[3] (ISBN 8371571488). Adam, 19:36, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In matter of fact, Kosinski paid visit to Poland in 1988 and then he signed the contract to publish some of his books, namely "The steps" published in 1988 and "Painted bird" in 1989. One can call that time decay of communism and it was obviously the time, when every ally of ruling communists was welcomed. I cannot recall exact year when I read it, but maybe it was in 1989. And obviously nobody heard about Siedlecka then. Moreover, for Polish reader the attributed location of the "Painted bird" was somewhere in Bellorussia (some forests in Eastern Europe). Cautious 23:15, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

2. The phrase unauthorized biographer also doesn't seem to be fitting given the fact that she published the book after Kosinski's death. Simply writing that it was written and released after his death would be more accurate.

3. Note that journalists, writers and the public opinion living in Poland, including Polish Catholics and Jews who survived the Holocaust and stayed in Poland after WW2, didn't have access to Kosinski's books under Communism, were isolated from the Western press and the Western discussion forums and couldn't openly debate on Kosinski's works or respond to them before 1989. This fact should help understand why the opinions of the people who lived with Kosinski during the war were for the first time published as late as 1993, by Siedlecka, after Kosinski's death, making it impossible for Kosinski to respond.

• Kosinski was first accused of lying by the Village Voice in the 1970's. Kosinski writes in the preface to newer editions of The Painted Bird about the negative reaction the book received in Poland, where the press had cast the book in a similar light as the Polish editor Cautious has done on this page.
  • First of all, I am not Cautious :) I don't have a wikipedia account. You can call me Adam. You can check my IP address to verify my identity. Back to the point, I think you are judging the Polish Communist press by Western standards. Polish people living in Poland didn't have access to Village Voice, nor any other Western newspaper. All media in Communist Poland were fully controlled and served the purpose of the Communist Party. The only independent news source was Radio Free Europe broadcast from abroad. Obviously, it was one-way communication. "Painted Bird" or "The Future is Ours, Comrade" were never released before the collapse of Communism and Polish people didn't have access to them. However, some Poles might have heard of the author from rumours, as Kosinski received a lot of publicity in the West. His books were firmly anti-Communist so the goverment couldn't publish them and the Communists were very keen on discrediting Kosinski, just like they tried to discredit Milosz, Gombrowicz and other Polish emigre writers. So, obviously, the easiest way to do that was to accuse Kosinski of being anti-Polish, which they did, using the press (which they fully controlled). However, if someone, you or Kosinski, calls this press "the Polish press" or calls the articles there "the negative reaction the book received in Poland", it is a misunderstanding: the Polish Communist press didnt serve as a forum for intellectual debates, like in the West, but was a tool in the hands of the authorities. Polish intellectuals or scholars didn't have access to the book itself, they probably read what was written in the Polish Communist press but usually didnt trust it anyway. Nor could they publish essays in the so-called Polish press (the Communist press) if they happened to know something more about the book or the author and have any independent opinions about them. Nor in any Western newspaper. Which was my point here.
    
  • As for the Village Voice article itself, it was actually published in 1982, not 1970. Yes, you are right, it was this article that first accused Kosinski of lying. Siedlecka only managed to find his neighbours and establish Kosinski's war-time life in more detail. She also wrote about his father's cooperation with the NKVD, although she was not entirely certain about it. I wasn't familiar with the Village Voice article, I had thought it only accused Kosinski of plagiarism. Sorry, I unintentionally overestimated the importance of Siedlecka's book. The reason why I attached so much importance to Siedlecka was that her biography had more impact in Poland than it had in the West. When it was published in 1993, ordinary Polish people hardly knew who Kosinski was. In 1989, after Communism collapsed, "Painted Bird" and the 1982 Village Voice article were history. Polish people had more important problems to deal with and only professional scholars used the opportunity to read the "Painted Bird" and to read what the Western press wrote about it 7 years earlier. It was only in 1993, when Siedlecka's book was published, that a debate on Kosinski and Painted Bird was sparked in Poland on the pages of Free Press. This let the Poles who were unfamiliar with the Kosinski's books to actually learn about the author, read The Painted Bird, the Village Voice article, etc. on a broad scale. But it seems that by that time Kosinski was not a hot topic in the West anymore. Hence my mistake that I thought that it was Siedlecka's book that exposed the true story behind Kosinski.
    
  • Nevertheless, let me summarise what was my point here: no matter whether it was Village Voice in 1982 or Siedlecka in 1993, Kosinski's war-time neighbours were unable to respond to his book for a very long time because of the conditions I described above regarding the lack of Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech in Communist Poland.
    

4. The article mentions another picture of Kosinski presented by Siedlecka. In detail, Siedlecka, basing on conversations with Kosinski's wartime neighbours, came to the conclusion that Kosinski was not really wandering around the countryside during WW2 like the character in Painted Bird and that he didnt face such harsh treatment as described in the book. Regardless whether Siedlecka is right or wrong, can't we simply report in a few words what Siedlecka wrote, clearly state who this information comes from, and not use this euphemism? This is for people to know and let them judge themselves whether they trust it or not.

• My point is that as early as the 1970's Kosinski said that he didn't intend for the book to be autobiographical. If this biography is from 1993, then it isn't really that noteworthy considering the earlier accusations.
  • Well, a minor point was that it was 1982, not 1970. The major point is that you are actually right here, I unintentionally overestimated the importance of Siedlecka's book like I admitted above, sorry about that. Anyway, my point here is that we should clearly mention an important thing about Kosinski: that he was accused of not making it clear enough that the work of fiction he wrote was not autobiographical. Even if he had never officially said that his book was autobiographical, the book was taken as such for decades. It was praised for its "realism", used as the resource for teaching about the Holocaust, treated as a documentary. This had an enormous impact on how people in the West perceived the Holocaust and Polish people in general -- until 1982 and the Village Voice article. In 1982, many Western readers were shocked to learn that the events were fictional. So even if later editions of the book had a preface where Kosinski was arguing that he had never officially said that the book was autobiographical, well, precisely, he was writing that only after 1982 and he didnt make it clear enough before that. So why didn't he prevent the book from being taken for an autobiography by so many readers since the very beginning in 1965? As far as I know there are a lot theories: maybe he wanted to boost the sales of his book, maybe he was a compulsive liar, maybe he had an anti-Polish bias or maybe he didn't have such intention at all and it wasn't his fault that people were taking his book for an autobiography? I don't know, but I think we should mention these in the article and let the reader judge it by himself. Is that NPOV enough? BTW, even today some Westerners who come across the book and don't know much about its history believe in its accuracy and think "now I know what people mean when they mention this backward region of the world".
    
  • So maybe we should change the paragraph about Siedlecka's biography to a paragraph about the Village Voice article. We would write about the accusations and about Kosinski's response. We would have to move this paragraph before the one that mentions his death (I wanted the page to be in chronological order so I had written about Siedlecka's book after the information about Kosinski's suicide). We could also mention that Siedlecka confirmed the real picture of Kosinski's life during the Holocaust, and that she didn't confirm the alleged CIA connection, but mentioning Siedlecka is not very important.
    
  • However, I am too busy today to do that, sorry. I am not an expert in Kosinski's biography, I just bought Kosinski's Cockpit a few days ago and was curious what the wikipedia read about Kosinski. I found some obvious mistakes, so I tried to help and contributed some text. If anyone is willing to improve the article, you are welcome. I hope that my contribution would be helpful. I think (hope) that at least the short description of Painted Bird I contributed to the Jerzy Kosinski article a few days ago is balanced and can be accepted by everyone. Regards, Adam. P.S.: I hope the bold face is not annoying and makes the text more readable.

I only want to point out that to contribute to the neutrality of the article, you might consider changing the tone to reflect the fact that readers assumed the work to be based on his own real-life adventures but (at least here in USA) there was absolutely nothing within the splash pages or reviews or authors comments or bio to bolster this notion. It was an assumption ignorant people made since the book was labelled, categorized and filed under "FICTION". I personally read the book at age 18 (1985) and never even considered it to be anything but fiction. No one I knew assumed such either. Focusing the article on the accusation of plagerism and Kosinski's actual biography and subsequent "fall from grace" is misleading; Kosinski was beloved enough to be here in the states, wined and dined by the "beautiful people" and the toast of Existential academia. At the very least, some mention of his successes would be balancing. This article cheapens his contributions to literature and the Existential New Wave movement of the art world. Kosinski was a brilliant man, I do think he deserves better than this.

~~smibbo

" Kosinski came to the U.S. in 1957, from his native Poland. Here, as he had there, he gradually became known for a spectrum of sociopathic behavior ranging from mere megalomania to brutal sexual coercion, fraud and plagiarism. Yet he was so convincing that his powerful supporters (including Yale University and the New York Times) believed his side of these accounts for 25 years before evidence was finally published in the Village Voice showing the depth of his cons and dishonesty."

http://www.polaris.nova.edu/~alford/reviews/kosinski.html

So, i view of all these i would say that the article paints a rather positive picture of the old sod.

Take that also,

""Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity, this poignant account transcends confession," Elie Wiesel wrote in the Times Book Review. At the time of Kosinski's suicide, in 1991, Wiesel said, "I thought it was fiction, and when he told me it was autobiography I tore up my review and wrote one a thousand times better."" http://www.ukar.org/kosins.html

And what is that you are writing: "Kosinski was beloved enough to be here in the states, wined and dined by the "beautiful people" and the toast of Existential academia." What "beautiful people", what existential academia, existentialiste don't even like being refered to as a movement, let alone academia. You are seriously deldued.

Two comments

1. "The painted Bird" has been probably printed illegally in Poland before 1989. 2. I belive Kosinski lived with his parents during the war by an another family.

Elie Wiesel should maybe be mentioned in "Friendships". Drsruli (talk) 04:09, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Polanski - Manson connection

i think the article should include the fact kosinski was due to be at the sharon tate house the night the manson family murders took place. there is a huge section regarding that night in one of his novels - blind date - and such an experience has echoed in his works throughout his life regarding excessive violence. any suggestions?

I agree. If someone thinks that it is suspect, they can then add support for that suspicion.--Epeefleche 23:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

There is a letter in the NY Times archive: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/15/books/l-tate-did-expect-kosinski-124051.html that seems to be the one referred to in the New York Magazine article. It's behind a paywall, so I couldn't see it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpeschel (talk • contribs) 17:52, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

The human Condition

should be changed to the Goyim condition.

This article need some major editing.

The more i read about this con the more complex his pathological lying becomes. Here's an "official" chronology West Texas A&M University Writing Center.

http://www.wtamu.edu/academic/fah/eng/wc/jkchron.htm

But according two the village voice, and two biographies, the obviously forged chronology, forged by kosinski himself obviously is anything BUT the truth, so this guy not only insisted by virtue of the life story he told others that he lived what he wrote, but issued a false chronology to validate this.

Jerzy Kosinski Chronology 1933 Jerzy Nikodem Kosinski born June 18, Lodz, Poland to Micezyslaw and Elzbieta (Liniecka) Kosinski.

1939-1945 Assumed dead and forced to wander throughout the villages of Eastern Poland in flight from the Nazis.

1942 Suffers speech loss in traumatic accident.

1945 Located by parents in Lodz orphanage.

1948 Hospitalized after skiing accident which shocks him into recovery of his speech.

1950-1956 Ski instructor in Zakopane, Poland. Social instructor summers in Miedzyzdroje, Baltic Ocean.

Also his ties with the cia have got to be mentioned, even in the talk page:

Right from the start, Kosinski wrote under duress — an impecunious young man, particularly situated to be of use to clandestine forces, he could leapfrog to advancement only by cooperating with these forces. Thus, his first book, the Future is Ours, Comrade (1960), was published under the pseudonym Joseph Novak, and appears to have been sponsored by the CIA:

Czartoryski recommends Kosinski to the CIA.

Between Kosinski's penchant for telling more than the truth and the CIA's adamant insistence on telling as little as possible, the specific financial arrangements concerning the "book on Russia" may never be made public. Indeed, full documentation probably does not exist. A number of facts, however, argue strongly that there was CIA/USIA intermediation on behalf of the book, with or without Kosinski's full knowledge and understanding. One major piece of evidence is the name of the original titleholder on the Doubleday contract: Anthony B. Czartoryski. A further clue was the address to which communications for "Czartoryski" were to be delivered: the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America at 145 East Fifty-third Street.

The clear presumption is that Czartoryski became aware of Kosinski's notes, suggested the possibility of a book to his contacts within the CIA, and then had the manuscript delivered to Doubleday, which already was quite familiar with arrangements of this nature; Gibney served unwittingly to protect the author's identity and the manuscript's origin. (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 112)

Surprisingly quick production. As for the book, not only its instant acceptance but its quick production would remain a mystery for many years. How could a graduate student at Columbia — struggling with his course work, engaged in various side projects as a translator, and busy with the details of life in a strange country — how could such a person have turned out a copy that could be serialized in the editorially meticulous Reader's Digest in less than two years? (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 117)

Exactly what the CIA would have wanted.

All in all, the book is everything an American propaganda agency, or the propaganda arm of the CIA, might have hoped for in its wildest dreams. In broad perspective, it outlines the miserable conditions under which Soviet citizens are compelled to live their everyday lives. It shows how the spiritual greatness of the Russian people is undermined and persecuted by Communism. It describes a material deprivation appalling by 1960s American standards and a lack of privacy and personal freedom calculated to shock American audiences. The Russia of The Future is Ours is clearly a place where no American in his right mind would ever want to live. (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 129-130)

As Kosinski's veracity in The Painted Bird came increasingly under question, his support came most noticeably from Jews, reinforcing the hypothesis of a Jewish tendency to side with coreligionists rather than with truth, despite the consequent lowering of Jewish credibility:

Byron Sherwin at Spertus also checked in with his support, reaffirming an invitation to Kosinski to appear as the Spertus award recipient at their annual fund-raiser in October, before 1,500 guests at Chicago's Hyatt Regency. He mentioned a list of notable predecessors including Arthur Goldberg, Elie Wiesel, Philip Klutznick, Yitzhak Rabin, and Abraham Joshua Heschel himself; the 1978 recipient, Isaac Bashevis Singer, had recently won the Nobel Prize. Kosinski was deeply moved by this support from Sherwin and Spertus, and its direct fallout was a move to make Spertus the ultimate site for his personal papers, with Sherwin serving as coexecutor of his estate. At the same time it accelerated his movement back toward his Jewish roots. In his greatest moment of crisis, the strongest support had come not from his fellow intellectuals, but from those who identified with him as a Jew. (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 389)

Not only did the Jews get mileage out of The Painted Bird, but so did the Germans, at the expense of the Poles, of course:

The German edition was a hit.

The book was doing reasonably well in England and France, better certainly than in America, but the German edition was an out-and-out hit. For a Germany struggling to shuck off the collective national guilt for World War II and the Holocaust, its focus on the "Eastern European" peasants may have suggested that sadistic behavior and genocide were not a national trait or the crime of a specific group but part of a universally distributed human depravity; a gentler view is that the book became part of a continuing German examination of the war years. Perhaps both views reflect aspects of the book's success in Germany, where Der bemalte Vogel actually made it onto bestseller lists. (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 234)

Attempt to dilute German guilt.

The Warsaw magazine Forum compared Kosinski to Goebbels and Senator McCarthy and emphasized a particular sore point for Poles: the relatively sympathetic treatment of a German soldier. Kosinski, the review argued, put himself on the side of the Hitlerites, who saw their crimes as the work of "pacifiers of a primitive pre-historic jungle." Glos Nauczycielski, the weekly publication of the teaching profession, took the same line, accusing The Painted Bird of an attempt "to dilute the German guilt for the crime of genocide by including the supposed guilt of all other Europeans and particularly those from Eastern Europe." (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 236)

Although Sloan does not speculate that the French may have had similar motives to the Germans for promoting Kosinski's book, we have already seen the French buying protection from accusations of complicity in the Holocaust, and wonder whether the high honor they paid The Painted Bird may not have been motivated to further deflect attention from their own collaboration:

Kosinski returned to New York on April 14, and only two weeks later received the best news of all from Europe. On May 2, Flammarion cabled Houghton Mifflin that L'Oiseau bariole had been awarded the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger — the annual award given in France for the best foreign book of the year. Previous winners included Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, Heinrich Böll, Robert Penn Warren, Oscar Lewis, Angus Wilson, and Nikos Kazantzakis. New York might be the center of publishing, but Paris was still, to many minds, the intellectual center of the universe, and Kosinski had swept the French intellectual world off its feet. Any who had doubted the aesthetic merits of The Painted Bird were now shamed into silence. The authority of the "eleven distinguished jurors" was an absolute in New York as in Paris; Kosinski's first novel had swept the board. (James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 234-235)

http://www.ukar.org/kosins.html

photo

hi ...can anyone add a photo? tx. --Epeefleche 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

About his surname

http://www.wtamu.edu/academic/fah/eng/wc/jkchron.htm see and then change the article!

• Whoa, hold your horses. The above quoted article posted at WTAMU is disappointingly selective in its choice of supplied data and it contains serious mistakes and omissions suggesting little attention to detail right from the start. For example, there's no such name in Polish as Micezyslaw. However, there's a Mieczysław, etc. Do your homework! I suggest reading Professor Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski's article on Kosinski as being one of three leading literary profiteers of the Holocaust.

Sounding alarm

The article about Kosinski is getting increasingly one-sided as the time goes on. It is turning into an attempt made by just one Wikipedian, Epeefleche, at choking the voice of reason. Sources are grossly omitted in his new editions and other facts are conspicuously removed by him. Poeticbent 22:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's just one citation removed by Epeefleche as of November 13, and replaced with a barrage of source-less quotations.

• Norman Finkelstein responded to such misrepresentations by stating in his book The Holocaust Industry: "Long after Kosinsky was exposed as a consummate literary hoaxer, Wiesel continued to heap encomiums on his "remarkable body of work"."[4]

The meaning and the purpose of the above citation has been reworked by Epeefleche and the placement changed to diffuse its impact. Poeticbent 23:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The Finkelstein language was moved and added to, not "removed" as you suggest. It now follows the Village Voice-related discussion, rather than being embedded in the middle of it. Nothing is being choked. I have added sources that you suggest were "grossly omitted" in my editions [sic], Hermit-style, in a manner that JK would I imagine approve. My additions are now far more replete with citations than the article its was formerly. --Epeefleche 23:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• I have placed Finkelstein point of view where I did for a reason. In that sense my contribution to a ballanced article (i.e. the false claims made by Wiesel) was not moved, but "removed" by you and the actual logic of my sentence changed into sheer nonsense in the end. Poeticbent 23:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I left it where you put it, but put back some of the accurate material in the sentence that you had deleted, and put in a "sic" where JK's name was not spelled properly.

• The article about Kosiński is spiked with oversized quotations from articles written by people who have little if anything to do with the subject, like Terence Blacker, who writes children's books. Clearly, it is an attempt made by Epeefleche at overwhelming the reader with Kosiński's endless praises, however secondary or just plain meaningless.

The article has long lost its informative edge and turned into a mockery of good writing. The episodes of Kosiński’s life instilled by Epeefleche serve only one purpose, which is to maintain the disproportionate and misleading myth of Kosiński as a man... a sorry political boxing rink of just one Wikipedian with a lot of time on his hand. Poeticbent 02:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

As the cited-to writing indicates, Blacker was a publisher of Kosinski's books. He therefore has greater insight into the possiblities of the charges being true than the average person. But good point -- since people may not read the footnote, it is worth mentioning. --Epeefleche 03:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Prior to the most recent edits, this article did indeed have horrendous POV problems, in that it was relentlessly and nonsensically negative in tone. The Village Voice accusations that claimed Kosiński did not in fact write his books were simply presented as absolute fact. Now that the accusastions have been balanced by reliable sources who refute the allegations, the article seems NPOV. The controversy is fully detailed, with both sides of the argument presented. I will remove the tag.-Hal Raglan 19:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

The article has just been cleaned up with considerable effort. Anybody who'd like to see it being cleaned up even more should discuss it here in a specific way rather than tagging it again in total silence. Please read Cleanup#Specific_issues: "Some tags have alternate versions that apply to situations of greater specificity." --Poeticbent  talk  23:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ratajczak

I'd like to stay away from the controversy surrounding the Polish lecturer Ratajczak, however, his opinion on The Painted Bird was brought in to illustrate the accusations of anti-Polish sentiment directed toward Kosiński by some of his Polish readers. I do not see the need to go any further than that. --Poeticbent  talk  21:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

This section is written very unclearly.

Some readers accused Kosiński of anti-Polish sentiment. Dr. Dariusz Ratajczak, Polish lecturer at Opole University's Institute of Historical Studies wrote at length about Kosiński's Slavic “Untermensch” in his 1999 collection of essays entitled Niebezpieczne tematy (Dangerous subjects), in which he also wrote "that Zyklon B was used at the camp as a disinfectant and not for murdering people, that the showers were for bathing and not for genocide, and that survivors' accounts of gassing are unreliable". In December 2001 Ratajczak was convicted by the Polish court of promoting Holocaust denial. (Maciej T. Nowak, Gazeta Wyborcza, Dec. 11, 2001 (as per Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum webpage))

Others argued that The Painted Bird is a misinterpretation of the metaphoric nature of the novel. In newer editions Kosiński explained that his characters' nationality and ethnicity had intentionally been left ambiguous in order to prevent that very interpretation.

Poeticbent, can you say what it means, and why you were removing that one part of it? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:01, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with SlimVirgin that the subsection on anti-Polish sentiment is written very unclearly. This is what happens when editors with conflicting views try to edit the article at the same time. Statements live the lives of sacred cows, i.e. the second paragraph about the metaphoric nature of the novel which does not relate to Kosiński's presumed anti-Polish sentiment. Ratajczak is an extreme case by all standards and does not deserve the kind of attention in the corresponding subsection. I suppose with time broader and better examples can be found without taking attention away from the subject. The article is not about Holocaust denial and mentioning it opens a whole new can of worms. --Poeticbent  talk  22:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The rest of the section in unclear too, though, and the Holocaust denial thing is simply there to show that we're using a Holocaust denier as a source, which we ought not to be doing.

The point is: who has accused this person of anti-Polish sentiment i.e. racism? "Some readers" doesn't count as a source. Nor does "others." We need names of accusers, or a reliable publication discussing the issue. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

We ought not to be using a Holocaust denier as a source. It’s unacceptable. I propose that the whole subsection be readdressed. However, the opinions of Kosiński’s anti-Polish sentiment are there, see Shtetl: Some Comments From Viewers In my opinion the subsection should remain, but perhaps with a different take and sources.
I noticed User:Jayjg inserted a statement that contradicts the purpose of the subsection. This is how the article becomes torn apart. Varsovians were buying the book first time out of curiosity. Their opinions were to follow later. Contradicting each other is not helping. --Poeticbent  talk  00:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You say it's unacceptable to use a Holocaust denier as a source, but you used the IHR, a Holocaust-denying organization, to support the edit that Ratajczak was only "explaining Holocaust revisionism." SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I've never actually read Ratajczak and therefore cannot confirm nor discredit sources on the basis of data which you seem to be familiar with a lot more than I am. However, please note that your suggestions are much appreciated. I would only add that according to www.auschwitz.org.pl "Ratajczak declared himself innocent and claimed that he had refrained from authorial comment when presenting the views of Holocaust revisionists." The source statement was not totally without context even if disproved by the court.

In closing. The article subsection on Polish objections to the book — after all the muscle flexing by two new editors who came on the scene — indicates that Polish people were just happy to purchase the copy. Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Polish internet is filled with voices of concern over Kosiński’s anti-Polish sentiment. But hush, let’s congratulate each other on joining the ranks of sacred cows. Antipolonism has magically disappeared from the article. JK would be proud. --Poeticbent  talk  06:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not following your argument. The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, which you quote above, also said: "Should Ratajczak again deny the Holocaust in that period, he will find himself back in court," which indicates they regard him as a Holocaust denier. They also note that the second edition of his book was published by Leszek Bubel, which they say is "known for his anti-Semitic, racist publications." [5]

If what you're saying is correct, there are surely more reliable sources out there than a Holocaust denier. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 08:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The sources are there all right, but they are all in Polish. I don’t want to get entangled in original research, therefore must rely on what has already been written in English about this matter. I’m not surprised that Ratajczak’s court case has been picked up by a Holocaust-denying organization since he’s been sentenced for Holocaust revisionism. Irrespective, the language barrier is the reason why it took so long to reveal Kosiński’s lies about his own past in the first place. I can only hope that it won’t have to take that long for the reaction of the Polish public to come through in this article. It might, though, considering your flair for wiping out what has already been said. Happy editing! --Poeticbent  talk  15:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not understanding this. You insisted that Ratajczak, and his being brought before the court, be included in the article, when you were quoting unreliable Holocaust Denial sources. Then when proper sources were used, showing that he had actually been convicted of Holocaust denial, you wanted them removed. Look here: I delete it, you re-insert it. I insist the reliable sources be quoted accurately, suddenly you're o.k. with removing it. As for the rest of the article, you appear to have turned it into an attack article on Kosinski, in direct contravention of WP:BLP. If I had time, I'd actually clean it up, but that would end up removing most of it. Jayjg ^(talk) 16:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Please help yourself and remove most of the article Jayjg. I see where you’re coming from. You contradicted Kosiński’s anti-Polish sentiment because you don’t like the thought. Bravo! Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about that. However, please note that there isn’t a single word of original research coming from me in this article. On the other hand, you have whitewashed the article subsection on Kosiński’s anti-Polonism instead of adding a note about Ratajczak’s conviction (which would have been most appropriate), because of what you call an “unreliable source”. — It took me a couple of reverts to finally understand what you meant by “unreliable” (i.e. denying Holocaust). I hope you do remember though that the “proper sources” by both our standards were added by me, not by you. --Poeticbent  talk  18:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

April controversy

There seem to be an edit war going on recently. Could the participants explain what they are disputing here? For now I'll just note that Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, while an amateur historian, is an acknowledge academic and his works on Eastern European history have received positive reviews by specialists (ex. here by Aleksander Gella). I am not sure about other sites; the reliablity of each disputed reference should be discussed here - however certainly the article version I read just now in 'The Painted Bird' seems to be rather biased towards pro-Kosinski and thus not NPOV.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  21:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd also suggest simply leaving a short summary here and moving excessive details to The Painted Bird (novel).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  03:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Redirect

I made a redirection from Josek Lewinkopf to this page. May I suggest that you also highlight name Josek Lewinkopf in boldface as part of the first line. Britlawyer 02:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions provides that article names should be "what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize". For example, see the article entitled Bill Clinton (not "William Jefferson Clinton"). In this case, we have an individual who was born in Poland but achieved notability as an English-language writer in the United States. He wrote using the name "Jerzy Kosinski" as on this book cover. Among English-speakers, he is known as "Jerzy Kosinski", not "Jerzy Kosiński". If there is no objection I will perform the move. --Mathew5000 00:58, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I just checked the links used as references and every one that is in English spels the subject's name "Kosinski" with no diacritical.(One possible exception is aan AOL member page which probably doesn't belong, and which uses the diacritical just once. [6]). Since it is apparently the spelling preferred by the subject, and the one which is overwhelmingly used in English, I support the move. -Will Beback · † · 01:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The U.S. Library of Congress lists him under Kosinski, with no accent. I agree with the rationale for a move to an accentless form. Joeldl 07:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

This article has been renamed from Jerzy Kosiński to Jerzy Kosinski as the result of a move request. --Stemonitis 17:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Wallace on Kosinski

Who butchered the quote about "Steps" said by David Foster Wallace? You took out the opinion and left only the description. Opinions are not disallowed on Wikipedia if we are quoting someone else whom we cite. Foster Wallace is a giant of modern fiction and he is illuminating his high praise of another author-- I think it's clearly relevant. Please leave it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chicopac (talk • contribs) 17:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I know the matter is settled since my edit has been here a long time, but I also want to mention--David Foster Wallace's quote where he says Steps is "better than everything else he ever did, combined" was clearly a commentary about the accusations of plagiarism by Kosinski, and that even if everything else he ever wrote was faked, this is enough, making the quote even more relevant. Chicopac (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC).

Comment

Is the man really held in such low regard today?

If all he did was not true, but just an effort at decption at the cost of others, living by cunning like a con man, his fear of finaly being caught may have prompted him to a sad action.

All the suposition withour fact in the document , including the referencing of plays, or other non accessible sources as fact, seem to indicate the article is indeed oddly slanted in his favour. who would benefit from a slanted view ?

I wonder if he clearly stated on the cover of his book that it was fiction ( the painted bird) or did he really belive in the fiction? Could self delusion of this false reallity have partly led to his dimise? Why did he delude himself this way ?

Out of curiosity, is there a connection between the last two things?

Josh, I really don't know. I'd speculate that he committed suicide because of a number of things, since depressed people become tend to become overwhelmed and every challenge seems magnified. The drubbing he was taking critically certainly wouldn't have helped. Also, survivor's guilt is a well-documented phenomenon, so that may have had something to do with it, since he survived WWII in Poland. But I haven't looked into it to see if he left any sort of explanation as to why. I suppose that would be in order to fill out the entry.... since we are just guessing here, maybe the actuall story of his life now evident on the internet produced an effect to make the decsion he took one he deemed correct to escape the justice that was his outcome of the years of living off cunning. His attempt to get even with those who would not let him write his own version of the history that had befallen him but stick to actuall evidence and fact was invovled.

Maybe there was more to the story than he wrote and this led him to perform as he did ?

Does he act like the character from the movie Catch me if you Can? About a confidence man who also did not get away with it ?

Main point or theme of Being There overlooked.

Editor, I think you need to re-think your analysis of the Being There. Your description completely overlooks the fundamental point of the story; the satire of the US media was only a sub-plot, a means to a greater end. The story was a statement on how we humans perceive and actually create reality through our own subjective lenses, which was nicely summed up with the last line heard in the film; "...because life... is a state of mind."

The theme was organized religion vs. pure, simple beingness.

Chance the gardener, like Jesus Christ, was completely misunderstood by his peers. What people couldn't understand or explain, they simply made up in their own minds, and their illusions became "the truth." Like Jesus, Chance simply was, no more no less. Simple, without deception, just "being there." It was a deceptive and convoluted world that could not understand this simplicity. Another visual in the film that underscored Kosinski's likening of Chance to Jesus was when we see Chance walking on water at the end of the film, in case anyone missed this message throughout the story.

Peter Litwin 11/15/2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.136.108.21 (talk) 23:25, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem

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Category: American Jews

He is Polish and American. He is also Jewish and is in the category Polish Jews. Is there a reason he is not in the American Jews category or can I add him?Anibar E (talk) 03:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

B-class review

Quick failed for WP:POLAND due to insufficient inline citations. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:10, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Serious Problems Throughout, but first and foremost is Ivo Pogonowski

Making any kind of reference to the Pogonowski column is offensive and against Wikipedia policy. It should be removed immediately, and if those involved with it change it back, I think it should be reported to the quality control elements. There is no room to be using such an anti-Semetic, unsourced, uncredited, internet hit piece to attack a major 20th Century author.

It's a big project though and so I would like help. Anyone willing to join me? I could, for instance, bring in the esteemed literary critic Lawrence Langer's writing on The Painted Bird to reference that book, and possibly find more on his life. I'd just like some help.

--Robert Waalk (talk) 05:04, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Second City TV parody of Kosinski

shouldn't the article make mention of the Second City TV parody of Kinsinski's claim that he always looked for hinding places wherever he went, a hide and seek gameshow-like parody called, as I recollect, "Let's Find Jerzy"?

15:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC) Michael Christian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.19.63.222 (talk)

Plagarism

I read the Wikipedia article on the book "Being There" was supposedly plagiarized from. They're really quite different. This entire article is far too strong on the supposed plagiarism and ghost writer claims, especially when you consider the high profile sources that have defended Kosinski. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.31.52.185 (talk) 20:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

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Writer in Residence at University of Michigan

Of course I'm not mentioning any of this in the article since it's my own personal recollection, but I was a freshman residing at Alice Lloyd Hall at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1968 when Jerzy Kosiński stayed there for two weeks as part of the university's "Writers in Residence" program (Kurt Vonnegut was the Writer in Residence the next semester, in the spring of 1969).

While he was there he had meals in the residence dining hall with us students and he would discuss different topics, including how when he came to America he would call "Information" and talk to the directory assistance operators to practice his English. Embram (talk) 04:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Removed Iwo Pogonowski Source

I removed the section of "The Painted Bird" which cites Iwo Pogonowski's self-public essay. There is zero information about newspapers or articles the villagers voiced their complaints in upon reading the translated version of the novel (which was only published in Poland in 1989), and a search on Google seems to indicate that Pogonowski is the only person who mentions them even reading it in the first place. Finally, a cursory look at that article alone reveals the shameless repeating of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories ("Radical Jews used [pornography] in the past to weaken morally and politically the majority in the countries of their residence", which seems to me like the author is using the controversy around the novel to push anti-Semitism in general. Midnight-Blue766 (talk) 06:23, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Article in December 2023 issue of Vanity Fair magazine about Jerzy Kosiński

Vanity Fair magazine has a feature article in their December 2023 issue about Jerzy Kosiński, written by Wayne Lawson, who co-edited two of the author's books.[7] Those interested in this topic might find it worth reading. Siberian Husky (talk) 23:15, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Criticism section is a mess

It should be clearly separated into criticism related to plagiarism allegations, which seem disputed, and the ones about claiming a fictional story as part of his autobiography, which AFAIK are not. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)