The Painted Bird

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Painted Bird
Author	Jerzy Kosiński
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	War novel
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Publication date	1967
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-8021-3422-X
Followed by	Steps (1969)

The Painted Bird is a controversial 1965 publication by Jerzy Kosiński which describes the world as seen by a young black-haired, black-eyed boy who wanders about small towns scattered around Central or Eastern Europe (presumably Poland) during World War II. It is now vended as a novel.

“For years Kosiński passed off The Painted Bird as the true story of his own experience during the Holocaust,” wrote D. G. Myers, Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University. “Long before writing it he regaled friends and dinner parties with macabre tales of a childhood spent in hiding among the Polish peasantry. Among those who were fascinated was Dorothy de Santillana, a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, to whom Kosiński confided that he had a manuscript based on his experiences.”^[1]

1 Major themes
2 Literary significance & criticism
3 See also
4 Sources
5 References

[edit] Major themes

The book describes the boy's encounter with peasants engaged in all forms of sexual and social deviance such as incest, bestiality and rape, and in a huge amount of violence – often at the expense of the child. While the book has been said to depict Christian Polish peasants in a derogatory fashion, some argue that it was not a particular ethnic or social group, but all people, who are viewed as inherently predisposed to cruelty.

The title is drawn from an analogy to human life, described within the book. The boy finds himself in the company of a professional bird catcher. When the man is particularly upset or bored, he takes one of his captured birds and paints it several colors. Then he watches the bird fly through the air in search of a flock of its kin. When it comes upon them, they see it as an intruder and tear at the bird until it dies, falling from the sky.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

According to Agnieszka Piotrowska, it was "described by Arthur Miller and Ellie Wiesel [sic] as one of the most important books in the so-called Holocaust literature."^[2] Wiesel wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was: "One of the best... Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity"^[3] Richard Kluger, reviewing it for Harper's Magazine, wrote: "Extraordinary... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read".^[4] And Jonathan Yardley, reviewing it for The Miami Herald, wrote: "Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World War II, nothing stands higher than Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. A magnificent work of art, and a celebration of the individual will. No one who reads it will forget it; no one who reads it will be unmoved by it. The Painted Bird enriches our literature and our lives".^[5]

"Cynthia Ozick later gushed" – wrote Norman Finkelstein – "that she 'immediately' recognized Kosiński's authenticity as 'a Jewish survivor and witness to the Holocaust'." ^[6] Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005",^[7] accentuating the presumed atrocities perceived by a Jewish boy in rural Poland.

“When Kosiński's Painted Bird was translated into Polish" – wrote Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, author of a 1998 book on the subject of Polish Jewish history – "it was read by the people with whom the Lewinkopf [Kosiński] family lived during the war. They were scandalized by the tales of abuse that never happened. They recognized names of Jewish children sheltered by them during the war – children who survived thanks to them, now painted as victims of their abuse. They were bitter and offended by Jerzy's ingratitude and obsession to slander them.” According to Pogonowski, The Painted Bird – due to its "pornographic content" – became Kosiński's most successful attempt at profiteering from the Holocaust. ^[8]. The "author's obvious relish in describing acts of rape, and his inventiveness in imagining new methods, crosses the line and becomes less about the atrocities of World War II than about his warped obsessions. These scenes are so gratuitous that it is uncomfortable-making to read them." ^[9]

Irena Tomaszewska, author of a 1994 book Żegota – The Rescue of Jews in Wartime Poland, in a 22-page report published by the Polish-Canadian Congress wrote that Kosiński's falsification of history resulted in the "gradual shifting of responsibility for Holocaust from the Nazis to the Poles." ^[10]

Norman Finkelstein, an assistant professor of political science at DePaul University, wrote in The Holocaust Industry: "Long after Kosińsky was exposed as a consummate literary hoaxer, Wiesel continued to heap encomiums on his "remarkable body of work."^[11]

It is also 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.^{[citation needed]} Polish literary critic and University of Warsaw professor, Paweł Dudziak, notes that the Painted Bird is a great, if controversial piece. He stresses that since the book is surreal - a fictional tale - and does not present, nor claims to present real world events - accusation of anti-Polish sentiment are nothing but misunderstanding of the book by those who take it too literally.^[12]

[edit] Authorship controversy

According to Eliot Weinberger, contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator, Kosiński was not the author of the book. Weinberger alleged in his collection Karmic Traces that Kosiński had very little fluent knowledge of English at the time of its writing.⁽³⁾

M.A.Orthofer addressed Weinberger's assertion by saying: "Kosinski was, in many respects, a fake – possibly near as genuine a one as Weinberger could want. (One aspect of the best fakes is the lingering doubt that, possibly, there is some authenticity behind them – as is the case with Kosinski.) Kosinski famously liked to pretend he was someone he wasn't (as do many of the characters in his books), he occasionally published under a pseudonym, and, apparently, he plagiarized and forged left and right." ^[13]

[edit] Claims of plagiarism

In June 1982, a Village Voice article accused Kosiński of plagiarism, claiming much of his work was derivative of Polish sources unfamiliar to English readers. (Being There bears a strong resemblance to Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy – The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma – a 1932 Polish bestseller by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz). The article also claimed that Kosiński's books had actually been ghost-written by his "assistant editors," pointing to striking stylistic differences among Kosiński's novels. New York poet, publisher and translator, George Reavey, who in American biographer James Sloan's opinion was embittered by his own lack of literary success, claimed to have written The Painted Bird. Reavey's assertions were ignored by the press. ^[14]

In a Publishers Weekly article, Les Pockell, the editor of Passion Play and The Devil Tree, said that the charges were "totally ludicrous. It's clear no one in the article is asserting that he or she wrote the book."– Pockell's quote comes from an anonymous webpage featuring claims proven false about Kosiński's wartime experience.^[15] Because Kosiński was "obsessive" about his writing, Pockell continued, "he retained people to copy edit." Pockell told the Los Angeles Times Calendar that he felt the article's authors "played upon the ignorance of the general public about the conventions of publishing," and "to turn Kosinski's working methods into something sinister makes one wonder about their motives".^[16]

The article presented a different picture of Kosiński's life during the Holocaust – a view which was later supported by a Polish biographer, Joanna Siedlecka, and Sloan. The article asserted that The Painted Bird, assumed by some to be semi-autobiographical, was a work of fiction. The article maintained that rather than wandering the Polish countryside, Kosiński had spent the war years in hiding with a Polish Catholic family and had never been appreciably mistreated.

In a letter to the Village Voice, Austen Olney, editor in chief of Houghton Mifflin, wrote:

"I have been marginally involved with the three Kosinski novels published by Houghton Mifflin and can attest to the fact that he is a difficult and demanding author who makes endless (and to my way of thinking often niggling) corrections in proof. I have been sometimes overwhelmed by his flamboyant conceits and his artful social manipulations, but I have never had any reason to believe that he has ever needed or used any but the most routine editorial assistance. The remarkable consistency of tone in all his novels seems to me sufficient evidence that they all come from his hands alone." ^[17]

Terence Blacker, an English publisher (who published Kosiński's books) and author of children's books and mysteries for adults, wrote in response to the article's accusations in his article published in The Independent in 2002:

"The significant point about Jerzy Kosinski was that ... his books ... had a vision and a voice consistent with one another and with the man himself. The problem was perhaps that he was a successful, worldly author who played polo, moved in fashionable circles and even appeared as an actor in Warren Beatty's Reds. He seemed to have had an adventurous and rather kinky sexuality which, to many, made him all the more suspect. All in all, he was a perfect candidate for the snarling pack of literary hangers-on to turn on. There is something about a storyteller becoming rich and having a reasonably full private life that has a powerful potential to irritate so that, when things go wrong, it causes a very special kind of joy." ^[18]

D. G. Myers responded to Blacker's type assertions in his review of Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography by James Park Sloan:

"This theory explains much: the reckless driving, the abuse of small dogs, the thirst for fame, the fabrication of personal experience, the secretiveness about how he wrote, the denial of his Jewish identity. 'There was a hollow space at the center of Kosiński that had resulted from denying his past,' Sloan writes, 'and his whole life had become a race to fill in that hollow space before it caused him to implode, collapsing inward upon himself like a burnt-out star.' On this theory, Kosinski emerges as a classic borderline personality, frantically defending himself against… all-out psychosis.^[19]

John Corry, a controversial figure himself^[20] wrote a 6,000-word feature article in The New York Times in November 1982, responding and defending Kosiński, which appeared on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section. Among other things, Corry alleged that reports claiming that "Kosinski [sic] was a plagiarist in the pay of the C.I.A. were the product of a Polish Communist disinformation campaign."^[21]

Although some readers assumed it was based on the author's experiences during World War II, the book was published and marketed as "fiction." Most of the events depicted are now widely considered to be fictional. It later became clear that Kosiński was neither the boy in the story nor did he share any of the boy's experiences, as revealed in a series of articles in newspapers and books.⁽²⁾

Kosiński himself responded that he had never maintained^{[citation needed]} that the book was based on autobiographical events, and by writing The Hermit of 69th Street (1988), in which he sought to demonstrate the absurdity of investigating prior work by inserting footnotes for practically every term in the book.^[22] "Ironically – wrote theatre critic Lucy Komisar – possibly his only true book... about a successful author who is shown to be a fraud." ^[23]

[edit] Further criticism

Norman Finkelstein wrote with discernible perplexity that Kosinski's book “depicts the Polish peasants he lived with as virulently anti-Semitic” even though they were fully aware of his Jewishness and “the dire consequences they themselves faced if caught.”^[24]

To others, the purpose of the book, from a deontological standpoint, was not to depict the cruelty of one group of people but to show the nature of all humanity, and of all existence, to be cruel.^{[citation needed]}

Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski indicated that the book is lacking any sense of moral responsibility toward the Polish farming family who saved Kosiński during the war, and who wrote letters of protest to the Polish press in response to the novel.^[25]

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

⁽¹⁾ James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996
⁽²⁾ Village Voice, June 1982.
⁽³⁾ Eliot Weinberger Genuine Fakes from his collection Karmic Traces; New Directions, 2000.
Kosinski, Jerzy. The Painted Bird, Grove Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8021-3422-X.