Jerzy Kosiński facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jerzy Kosiński
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Kosiński in 1969
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Józef Lewinkopf
June 14, 1933 Łódź, Poland
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| Died | May 3, 1991 (aged 57) New York City, U.S.
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| Education | University of Łódź |
| Occupation | Novelist |
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Mary Hayward Weir
(m. 1962; div. 1966)Katherina "Kiki" von Fraunhofer
(m. 1968) |
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Jerzy Kosiński (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjɛʐɨ kɔˈɕij̃skʲi]; born Józef Lewinkopf; June 14, 1933 – May 3, 1991) was a Polish-American writer and two-time president of the American Chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English. Born in Poland, he survived World War II in Poland as a Jewish man and, as a young man, emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen.
He was known for various novels, among them Being There (1971) and the The Painted Bird (1965), which were adapted as films in 1979 and 2019 respectively.
Contents
Biography
Kosiński was born Józef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland, in 1933. As a child during World War II, he lived in occupied central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosiński, which his father gave to him. Eugeniusz Okoń, a Catholic priest, issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance to Polish Jews, often at great risk. Kosiński's father was assisted not only by town leaders and clergymen, but also by individuals such as Marianna Pasiowa, a member of an underground network that helped Jews evade capture. The family lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka, near Stalowa Wola, and attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, with the support of villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka. For a time, they were sheltered by a Catholic family in Rzeczyca Okrągła. Jerzy even served as an altar boy in the local church.
As Kosiński's father aligned himself with the new communist regime in Poland, his family postwar life was relatively well-off. After the war ended, Kosiński and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra. By age 22, he had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Łódź. He then became a teaching assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Kosiński also studied in the Soviet Union, and served as a sharpshooter in the Polish Army. His biographer claimed that Kosinski disliked conformity and therefore, communism that his father swore an allegiance to, developing anti-commumist views.
To migrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. He later claimed he forged the letters from prominent communist authorities guaranteeing his loyal return to Poland, as were then required for anyone leaving the country.
Kosiński first worked at odd jobs to get by, including driving a truck, and he managed to graduate from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965. He also received grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and the Ford Foundation in 1968. In 1970, he won the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature. The grants allowed him to write a political non-fiction book that opened new doors of opportunity. He became a lecturer at Yale, Princeton, Davenport, and Wesleyan universities.
Kosiński practiced the photographic arts, with one-man exhibitions to his credit in Warsaw's Crooked Circle Gallery (1957) and in the Andre Zarre Gallery in New York (1988).
In 1962, Kosiński married an American steel heiress, Mary Hayward Weir, eighteen years his senior. They divorced four years later. Weir died in 1968 from brain cancer, leaving Kosiński out of her will. He fictionalized his marriage in his novel Blind Date, speaking of Weir under the pseudonym Mary-Jane Kirkland. Kosiński later, in 1968, married Katherina "Kiki" von Fraunhofer (1933–2007), a marketing consultant and a descendant of Bavarian nobility.
Death
Toward the end of his life, Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses and questions arose regarding plagiarism in his work. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat.
He died on May 3, 1991. Per Kosiński's wishes, Kosiński was cremated and Oscar de la Renta spread his ashes near his home in the Dominican Republic, off a small cove in Casa de Campo.
Notable novels
Kosiński's novels have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, and have been translated into over 30 languages, with total sales estimated at 70 million in 1991.
The Painted Bird
The Painted Bird, Kosiński's 1965 novel, is a fictional account that depicts the personal experiences of a boy of unknown religious and ethnic background who wanders around unidentified areas of Eastern Europe during World War II and takes refuge among a series of people, many of whom are brutally cruel, either to him or to others.
Soon after the book was published in the US, Kosiński was accused by the then-Communist Polish government of being anti-Polish, especially following the regime's 1968 anti-Zionist campaign. The book was banned in Poland from its initial publication until the fall of the Communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed, thousands of Poles in Warsaw lined up for as long as eight hours to purchase copies of the work autographed by Kosiński. Polish literary critic and University of Warsaw professor Paweł Dudziak remarked that "in spite of the unclear role of its author,The Painted Bird is an achievement in English literature." He stressed that, because the book is a work of fiction and does not document real-world events, accusations of anti-Polish sentiment may result only from taking it too literally.
The book received recommendations from Elie Wiesel who wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was "one of the best ... Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity." Richard Kluger, reviewing it for Harper's Magazine wrote: "Extraordinary ... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read." 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 Kosiński'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."
Steps
Steps (1968), a novel comprising scores of loosely connected vignettes, won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
American novelist David Foster Wallace described Steps as a "collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that's like nothing else anywhere ever". Wallace continued in praise: "Only Kafka's fragments get anywhere close to where Kosiński goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined." Samuel Coale, in a 1974 discussion of Kosiński's fiction, wrote that "the narrator of Steps for instance, seems to be nothing more than a disembodied voice howling in some surrealistic wilderness."
Being There
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One of Kosiński's more significant works is Being There (1971), a satirical view of the absurd reality of America's media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man with few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy adviser. His simple and straightforward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. Many questions surround his mysterious origins, and filling in the blanks in his background proves impossible.
The novel was made into a 1979 movie directed by Hal Ashby, and starring Peter Sellers, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and Melvyn Douglas, who won the award for Best Supporting Actor. The screenplay was co-written by award-winning screenwriter Robert C. Jones and Kosiński. The film won the 1981 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Film) Best Screenplay Award, as well as the 1980 Writers Guild of America Award (Screen) for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It was nominated for the 1980 Golden Globe Best Screenplay Award (Motion Picture).
Television, radio, film, and newspaper appearances
Kosiński appeared 12 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson during 1971–1973, and The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, was a guest on the talk radio show of Long John Nebel, posed half-naked for a cover photograph by Annie Leibovitz for The New York Times Magazine in 1982, and presented the Oscar for screenwriting in 1982.
He also played the role of Bolshevik revolutionary and Politburo member Grigory Zinoviev in Warren Beatty's film Reds. The Time magazine critic wrote: "As Reed's Soviet nemesis, novelist Jerzy Kosinski acquits himself nicely–a tundra of ice against Reed's all-American fire." Newsweek complimented Kosiński's "delightfully abrasive" performance.
Friendships
Kosiński was friends with Roman Polanski, with whom he attended the National Film School in Łódź.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, who had a friendship with Kosiński, is introduced as a character in his novel Blind Date.
Kosiński wrote his novel Pinball (1982) for his friend George Harrison, having conceived of the idea for the book at least 10 years before writing it.
Filmography
- Being There (novel and screenplay, cameo in gala scene, 1979)
- Reds (actor, 1981) – Grigory Zinoviev
- The Statue of Liberty (1985) – Himself
- Łódź Ghetto (1989) – Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (voice)
- Religion, Inc. (actor, 1989) – Beggar (final film role)
- Nabarvené ptáče (film) (2019, orig. The Painted Bird)
Awards and honors
- 1966 – Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (essay category) for The Painted Bird
- 1969 – National Book Award for Steps.
- 1970 – Award in Literature, National Institute of Arts and Letters and American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 1973–75 – President of the American Chapter of P.E.N. Re-elected 1974, serving the maximum permitted two terms
- 1974 – B'rith Shalom Humanitarian Freedom Award
- 1977 – American Civil Liberties Union First Amendment Award
- 1979 – Writers Guild of America, East Best Screenplay Award for Being There (shared with screenwriter Robert C. Jones)
- 1980 – Polonia Media Perspectives Achievement Award
- 1981 – British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Best Screenplay of the Year Award for Being There
- International House Harry Edmonds Life Achievement Award
- Received PhD Honoris Causa in Hebrew Letters from Spertus College of Judaica
- 1988 – Received PhD Honoris Causa in Humane Letters from Albion College, Michigan
- 1989 – Received PhD Honoris Causa in Humane Letters from State University of New York at Potsdam
