We are all nothing more than the compilation of all the people and events we've experienced. How those things manifest themselves is what defines us. Kosinski was a very gifted, and troubled, man who like all of us carried on his back his personal history. "I fought with my twin, that enemy within, till one of us fell by the way..." -B Dylan 'Where Are You Tonight'

Thanks so much for uploading this. I'm fascinated with people like Kosinski, who blurred the line between fact and fiction. No doubt he was a very troubled man. Having to live in hiding as a child must have been traumatic, even without going through the terrible experiences he describes in The Painted Bird.

"Literature is not a moral beauty contest." --Philip Roth

Wait, you're telling me that a work of fiction ISN'T a factual account? Wow! Who knew?

ITS SIMPLE; WHAT IS THE QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF LITERARY PRODUCTION OF THOSE WHO SAY, THEY WROTE JERZY'S BOOKS?-IF THEY WERE THAT GOOD BY NOW ALL OF THEM WOULD HAVE PRODUCED LITERARY SENSATIONS COMPARABLE TO THE PAINTED BIRD.

This is incredible! I didn't know this documentary existed, and I am thrilled with it. It's good to see this rare footage, and the interviews with people who knew Kosinski well, such as John Corry and Urszula Dudziak (performing Jerzy's favorite song, no less!). I'm only 20 minutes in; I can't wait to watch the rest of it. I am well aware of the many controversies concerning Kosinski and his books. They make him more interesting, not less.

AND I GUEST, TONI MORRISON SHOULD HAVE AS WELL ASSUMED THE AUTHORSHIP RIGHTS OF ANGELA DAVIES' AUTOBIOGRAPHY, SINCE SHE HELPED TO COMPETENTLY EDIT AND PUT IT INTO SHAPE; WHICH IS NOTHING ELSE BUT THE JOB OF EDITORS.

gracias....a gifted and by consequence a troubled writer.

Jerzy Kozynski was dealing with hard matters to write about. Read his Biography. He had kind of a marvelous life, sort of a fairy tale. Inspite of what was no doubt, a quite dreadful childhood, if one believes what's told in The Painted Bird. Fiction or not, his Polish childhood during the WWII years, being him a Jew, could not have been a good or happy one. But when he came to the States, he fell in love with a young woman who happened to be a millionaire. He met her when he was washing her car with the machines. And then as through a Blind Date, they became lovers. And his life changed. She was a heiress of one of the steel industry moguls. He was deeply sad when she, "the music of my life" (as he wrote about her, when dedicating her one of his books), out of the blue, died because of cancer. But they had divorced a few years before. Think because she could not pardon him to have introduced her as a character in his Blind Date novel. Or because she did not liked the way she was portrayed there. He kept loving her after their divorce, for what I knew. He kept on writing and with Being There became famous. Or when that was taken into a movie he already was famous. However, being part of the Polansky clan in Hollywood, somehow damaged him. When after having published four or five novels, he started being difamated as someone with a living style as the perverts ones have. Meaning going into orgies, drugs abuse and so on. It's truth that Kozynski seems to write about a world with no ethics. E.G. In Cockpit, his main character moves from one thing into another, from a country into others, and what he does have no consequences, for him. He never answers for what he does. He seems to be above any law. We are watching him acting and reacting, though never knowing him at all. Free so much as to do what he pleases, all time. Or what he thinks he has to do. He has no team, no nothing, he's a loner or retired guy, with no bosses. We know he travels, the scenaries are changing from a place into another. We can deduce Tardem is kind of an early retired guy. Apparently, what happened to Kozynski is that maybe some Americans tried to made him pay for having written about someone like that. And about a world with no ethics. The underworlds his character gets into could too often be circles of hell. But Tardem does not get in all that to do any sort of Justice or goodness. If or when goodness appears as a result, it's as if by casualty, or because Tardem fancies it that way, just then. Other times, Tardem can be evil. In't all this mere reality for some white collar wealthy people and others, that gets rid of having done some wrong things? - isn't there people that seem to be above any laws? Suppose we all can do goodness but could do wrong under certain circumstances... - we only could deduce Tardem is cruel and cold, but nothing else. We'll never know Tardem. And surely better not to, anyway. In the sense of Jerzy's unfair critics case, it could even recall you a tad, that of the Lenny Bruce case. Though at a lighter level, of course. He should have not paid attention, or take those puritan critics into court. They seemed to think that what told in his books, had to see with his own life. Think he tried to explain that he could write about those things because he was there on the spot, but just as an observer. Never getting involved in. To be able to write about it. Think behind his cold, distant writing, was sheltered quite a romantic man. He was not a "pervert" for having being part of the Sharon Tate and Polansky circle. Or because of the things he wrote about. Those puritan kind of critics did a lot of harm to Jerzy, as think is told in the James Park Sloane Bio. They also hurted him badly when started saying that the Painted Bird was a kind of a copy of another unknown polish writer. Finally they kept on as if chasing him, when he received bad critics for his short last book. This Hermit book was certainly not his best, there the critics were right. Neither the Jockey novel was a good one. The Jockey one was a bit boring, for me. With the Hermit book they then went on saying he was finished as a writer. Someone with nothing else to say. He had money enough as to keep living without having to write anymore. And think he should and could have moved into California. Where he had friends of the movies world, (he was not only a pal of the Sharon Tate circle), and others. Remind he did a cameo in the Reds movie, where he played precisely the Trotsky role, if am not wrong. He should have gone to California just to forget about that wave of puritanism concerning him too. A reps wave that showed up when he was living in New York, in his last days. Instead of quitting the States or moving into California, he stood living in NY, but as a hermit, keeping away from the cold world outside. He kept indoors, as if willing the world to forget about him. Living a reclusive life, only increased his arising depression. All this lead him to commit suicide, according to Park Sloane. Was Kozynski a sample of how critics can destroy a man or was all that also a political case for having him supported the dems? Up to you to decide. Having read Cockpit and some others, I can only add that he was a good and interesting writer, whose books describe reality with raw chapters or snapshots of shocking plots. His best works are Cockpit and Blind Date, for me. Though the Devil Tree, in the same line is not a bad one, Neither. About The Painted Bird, I consider it a masterwork. A book that shall remain. Inspite of telling terrible stories and going into dark issues, or just because being able to enter into such worlds and depicts them so well, he was a good writer. To me it's all the same if he had to write his novels in Polish and then made them being translated or whatever. His kind of writing was quite an easy or simple telegraphic style, to say so. For that kind of writing one does not require a greater knowledge of the British language than the one he had. Definitely, for having to write in another language than his own, he did quite a good job, as a writer. Not at all the best seller cheap kind of author, he was also accused of being, because of his Pinball novel. They meant he was just searching scandal, with his works. And Pinball was more of the same he had been writing before, it was said. But obviously Kozynski was not at all a marketing product. A much more serious author than that, and a deep one. His mix of imagination and reality is a successful, well worked one. His books are page turners which besides, will make you think and leave their footprint. With a bit of a scandal behind, a creative and good author to recommend, have no doubt. Rest in peace, Jerzy. 😔🙏😇

Cringe at that guy at Harvard explaining his (poor, and poorly-received) joke.34:26

Great NOVEL

you exhibit a serious discernment problem between the genre of historical fiction and and the fact of historical events -- it is a novel of a psychological response to the war conditions as a child. It requires nothing more than compassion to understnd that if you're in posession of a minimal literary mind and/or of a minimally humane empathetic spirit. But as a holocaust denier it is impossible that you are even dealing with a grade-school-level stack of cards. Maybe others will recognize my pointer. I predict you won't. If you do not deny the holocaust, feel free to correct me.

Thanks.

ALL THOSE WHO ACCUSED JERZY OF NOT WRITING THOSE BOOKS, ESPECIALLY THOSE ''VERY GOOD EDITORS OUTSIDE THE PUBLISHING HOUSE-So gifted theyre had not been published or are still to publish anything significant-or better still show proof of their editing skills of a major author, in a major publishing house''-CHOOSE TO ATTACK JERZY AT LEAST FOR ONE LEGITIMATE REASON; 'THEY COULDN'T STAND THE FACT THAT, WITH THE MASTERY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WHICH THEY HAD;(WHICH JERZY DIDNT), THEY COULDN'T HAVE IN RETURN THE GIFT(ARTISTIC) OF JERZY'S IMAGINATION'-that jerzy was the ARTIST(below-average-or above) AND THEY WERE THE EDITORS/POST-TYPIST, WAS A BITTER PEAL FOR THEM TO SWALLOW...I WISH THEM GOOD LUCK IN THEIR FUTURE 'ARTISTIC' ENDEAVORS.

/6

ALL THOSE WHO CAME OUT TO LAY CLAIM TO THE AUTHORSHIP OF JERZY'S BOOKS ONLY CAME OUT BECAUSE THE BOOKS WERE SUCCESSFUL, AND JERZY WAS THE ONLY ONE GETTING THE ATTENTION-IF THOSE BOOKS WERE'NT AS SUCCESSFUL, WE WOULD'NT HAVE GOTTEN AS MUCH AS A SYLLABLE FROM ANY OF THOSE NUMERABLE, COMPETENT, AND OF COURSE ARTISTICALLY MEDIOCRE EDITORS OF Jerzy.