Non­fic­tion

Oral Plea­sure: Kosin­s­ki as Storyteller

Jerzy Kosin­s­ki; Kiki Kosin­s­ki and Bar­bara Tepa Lupack, eds.
  • Review
By – February 20, 2013

Pol­ish-Jew­ish-Amer­i­can writer Jerzy Kosin­s­ki (19331991) was no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy. His books were con­sid­ered too vio­lent, too sex­u­al. He loved going to sex clubs of all per­sua­sions. The Vil­lage Voice pub­lished a long piece in 1982 accus­ing him of pla­gia­rism. Crit­ics peri­od­i­cal­ly com­plained that his most famous book, The Paint­ed Bird, about a boy sur­viv­ing the Holo­caust, was not accu­rate, even though he explained again and again that it was a work of fic­tion based on his expe­ri­ences. When he added that there were good and bad Poles dur­ing World War II, just as there were good and bad Amer­i­cans, peo­ple com­plained he was deny­ing the fact of Pol­ish atroc­i­ties. Peo­ple expect­ed Kosin­s­ki, a Holo­caust sur­vivor him­self, to sup­port Holo­caust muse­ums and memo­ri­als; he tried to explain that they only seemed to com­mem­o­rate Nazi destruc­tion. Don’t vis­it Auschwitz, he argued, vis­it Kaz­imierz, forty-five min­utes away, and help them restore their crum­bling syn­a­gogues. Cel­e­brate thou­sands of years of Jew­ish achieve­ment, not the few short years of Jew­ish defeat. This intense col­lec­tion of Kosinski’s short essays, inter­views, and talks to a vari­ety of pub­lic groups has been loose­ly orga­nized into themes (on writ­ing, on sex, on vio­lence, etc.) but Kosinski’s voice is con­sis­tent through­out. He was proud to be Jew­ish and proud to be Pol­ish. He wrote fic­tion, not auto­bi­og­ra­phy; his nov­els should be read as nov­els, not as reportage. And yes, he loved sex­u­al­i­ty, which he con­sid­ered one of the purest cel­e­bra­tions of the human life force. Read­ing this anthol­o­gy, even Kosinski’s fiercest crit­ics will return to his nov­els with new under­stand­ing. Notes, photographs.

Bet­ti­na Berch, author of the recent biog­ra­phy, From Hes­ter Street to Hol­ly­wood: The Life and Work of Anzia Yezier­s­ka, teach­es part-time at the Bor­ough of Man­hat­tan Com­mu­ni­ty College.

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