FROM ARTHUR

 

During one of those periods when we were speaking to one another – I think maybe Ford was President – Gus Hasford and I tottled off to UCLA to see a talk by Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird. As fans of capracious existential doom, Gus and I agreed the novel was the bee's knees, mainly because it was so Bleak.

The only thing I remember from the talk was Kosiniski claiming he would have been at Sharon Tate's house THAT night had he not missed a plane flight. I can guess, though, he talked about an incident he described in an introduction to a new edition of The Painted Bird, which he must have written around then.

That incident being the tale of two of countrymen, upset that his portrait of ignorant superstitious peasants could be construed as a critque of their country, muscled into his apartment looking for Kosinski so they could kill him. Kosinski played it cool, pretended to be a guest and that the man they were looking for wasn't in. Would they like to wait? He got them to relax with a few drinks, then casually withdrew a pistol from a hiding place. The men caved immediately, and claimed they didn't want to hurt Kosinski, they just wanted to talk to him.

When I read this, the picture of the intruders and their furious backpedalling brought to mind the morons who murdered Ahmaud Arbery, and the depressing idea that the human species contains a lot of insipid dolts susceptible to acting at the behest of simplistic propaganda, especially if what passes for patriotism is involved.

And that was before I reread the novel. It's the whole bee, not just the knees. The nameless narrator is orhpaned by World War II and wanders, or escapes to, one harrowing plight after another. An antisepctic way of putting it would be to say he undergoes a series of a trials, from being repeatedly beaten by one "foster parent" after another, being thrown in a sewer because he looks "dark", and witnessing a savage horde unleashed by the Nazis rape and pillage a village with gay abandon.

The child is so traumatized that he loses the capacity to speak. Only when the Soviet army has "liberated" the village does he encounter any human kindness, as the soldiers feed him, care for his wounds, and a few become fond of him.

One of the selling points of the book, and one Kosinski apparently took a great deal of stock in, was the Truth of the events described. My copy has a quote from Arthur Miller saying the book "is so carefully kept within the margins of probability and fact". Well....

I can accept that Jewish families on trains on their way to concentration camps would, in desperation, throw their children from a window or push them through an opening in the floor, so that they might have a chance at life, just as a I can accept that a Russian sniper would extract revenge on the peasants for killing his friends, even if they probably deserved it.

But the Lovecraftian pit of rats that devour a man alive in moments? The inability of a man to, ahem, disengage after raping a young girl? He doesn't get out for over a week. Those sort of things strike as the stuff of a Polish version of magic realism, just a few steps beyond the veil of possibility.

By the time the soliders are telling him what sort of life they are working to build in their homeland (the narrator thinks Stalin is a saint), one wonders if a life where men are judged by their merits and there is no capricious cruelty isn't just another sideshow.

Like many a work striving to be great literature, the story doesn't end so much as it stops, when the kid is able to talk again. What does it all mean, and why is Art writing this? I have no idea, and Kosinski sure doesn't, because like many a hero of great books striving to be literature, he committed suicide, and this train of thought is over.

During one of those periods when we were speaking to one another – I think maybe Ford was President – Gus Hasford and I tottled off to UCLA to see a talk by Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird. As fans of capracious existential doom, Gus and I agreed the novel was the bee's knees, mainly because it was so Bleak.

The only thing I remember from the talk was Kosiniski claiming he would have been at Sharon Tate's house THAT night had he not missed a plane flight. I can guess, though, he talked about an incident he described in an introduction to a new edition of The Painted Bird, which he must have written around then.

That incident being the tale of two of countrymen, upset that his portrait of ignorant superstitious peasants could be construed as a critque of their country, muscled into his apartment looking for Kosinski so they could kill him. Kosinski played it cool, pretended to be a guest and that the man they were looking for wasn't in. Would they like to wait? He got them to relax with a few drinks, then casually withdrew a pistol from a hiding place. The men caved immediately, and claimed they didn't want to hurt Kosinski, they just wanted to talk to him.

When I read this, the picture of the intruders and their furious backpedalling brought to mind the morons who murdered Ahmaud Arbery, and the depressing idea that the human species contains a lot of insipid dolts susceptible to acting at the behest of simplistic propaganda, especially if what passes for patriotism is involved.

And that was before I reread the novel. It's the whole bee, not just the knees. The nameless narrator is orhpaned by World War II and wanders, or escapes to, one harrowing plight after another. An antisepctic way of putting it would be to say he undergoes a series of a trials, from being repeatedly beaten by one "foster parent" after another, being thrown in a sewer because he looks "dark", and witnessing a savage horde unleashed by the Nazis rape and pillage a village with gay abandon.

The child is so traumatized that he loses the capacity to speak. Only when the Soviet army has "liberated" the village does he encounter any human kindness, as the soldiers feed him, care for his wounds, and a few become fond of him.

One of the selling points of the book, and one Kosinski apparently took a great deal of stock in, was the Truth of the events described. My copy has a quote from Arthur Miller saying the book "is so carefully kept within the margins of probability and fact". Well....

I can accept that Jewish families on trains on their way to concentration camps would, in desperation, throw their children from a window or push them through an opening in the floor, so that they might have a chance at life, just as a I can accept that a Russian sniper would extract revenge on the peasants for killing his friends, even if they probably deserved it.

But the Lovecraftian pit of rats that devour a man alive in moments? The inability of a man to, ahem, disengage after raping a young girl? He doesn't get out for over a week. Those sort of things strike as the stuff of a Polish version of magic realism, just a few steps beyond the veil of possibility.

By the time the soliders are telling him what sort of life they are working to build in their homeland (the narrator thinks Stalin is a saint), one wonders if a life where men are judged by their merits and there is no capricious cruelty isn't just another sideshow.

Like many a work striving to be great literature, the story doesn't end so much as it stops, when the kid is able to talk again. What does it all mean, and why is Art writing this? I have no idea, and Kosinski sure doesn't, because like many a hero of great books striving to be literature, he committed suicide, and this train of thought is over.

During one of those periods when we were speaking to one another – I think maybe Ford was President – Gus Hasford and I tottled off to UCLA to see a talk by Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird. As fans of capracious existential doom, Gus and I agreed the novel was the bee's knees, mainly because it was so Bleak.

The only thing I remember from the talk was Kosiniski claiming he would have been at Sharon Tate's house THAT night had he not missed a plane flight. I can guess, though, he talked about an incident he described in an introduction to a new edition of The Painted Bird, which he must have written around then.

That incident being the tale of two of countrymen, upset that his portrait of ignorant superstitious peasants could be construed as a critque of their country, muscled into his apartment looking for Kosinski so they could kill him. Kosinski played it cool, pretended to be a guest and that the man they were looking for wasn't in. Would they like to wait? He got them to relax with a few drinks, then casually withdrew a pistol from a hiding place. The men caved immediately, and claimed they didn't want to hurt Kosinski, they just wanted to talk to him.

When I read this, the picture of the intruders and their furious backpedalling brought to mind the morons who murdered Ahmaud Arbery, and the depressing idea that the human species contains a lot of insipid dolts susceptible to acting at the behest of simplistic propaganda, especially if what passes for patriotism is involved.

And that was before I reread the novel. It's the whole bee, not just the knees. The nameless narrator is orhpaned by World War II and wanders, or escapes to, one harrowing plight after another. An antisepctic way of putting it would be to say he undergoes a series of a trials, from being repeatedly beaten by one "foster parent" after another, being thrown in a sewer because he looks "dark", and witnessing a savage horde unleashed by the Nazis rape and pillage a village with gay abandon.

The child is so traumatized that he loses the capacity to speak. Only when the Soviet army has "liberated" the village does he encounter any human kindness, as the soldiers feed him, care for his wounds, and a few become fond of him.

One of the selling points of the book, and one Kosinski apparently took a great deal of stock in, was the Truth of the events described. My copy has a quote from Arthur Miller saying the book "is so carefully kept within the margins of probability and fact". Well....

I can accept that Jewish families on trains on their way to concentration camps would, in desperation, throw their children from a window or push them through an opening in the floor, so that they might have a chance at life, just as a I can accept that a Russian sniper would extract revenge on the peasants for killing his friends, even if they probably deserved it.

But the Lovecraftian pit of rats that devour a man alive in moments? The inability of a man to, ahem, disengage after raping a young girl? He doesn't get out for over a week. Those sort of things strike as the stuff of a Polish version of magic realism, just a few steps beyond the veil of possibility.

By the time the soliders are telling him what sort of life they are working to build in their homeland (the narrator thinks Stalin is a saint), one wonders if a life where men are judged by their merits and there is no capricious cruelty isn't just another sideshow.

Like many a work striving to be great literature, the story doesn't end so much as it stops, when the kid is able to talk again. What does it all mean, and why is Art writing this? I have no idea, and Kosinski sure doesn't, because like many a hero of great books striving to be literature, he committed suicide, and this train of thought is over.