Now this compelling biography cuts to the complex heart of the truth about the man and the myth that was Jerzy Kosinski. In so doing, it unfolds a story of reality and deception as fascinating, as moving, as painfully honest, and as revelatory as the most gripping of novels.
With research that extends from the Poland of Kosinkiโs birth and early life to scrupulous examinations of every allegation against Kosinski throughout his career, James Park Sloan, who knew Kosinski for twenty years before his death, leaves no stone unturned and no mask intact. The facts of Kosinskiโs horrific childhood Holocaust experiences are sorted out from the fictions of The Painted Bird. Sloan traces Kosinskiโs years as an emigre student at Columbia; his marriage to an alcoholic American millionairess; his first literary mark with anti-Communist writings; his award-winning novels and the controversy surrounding their authorship; his triumphant climb to success on an increasingly shaky stairway of half-truths; his compulsive sexual adventuring in New York's erotic underground; his relationship with such figures as Norman Mailer, Roman Polanski, Henry Kissinger, and others in the political and cultural limelight; and the Gotterdammerung of his life and reputation when an article in the Village Voice cast all he had done in doubt despite his denials and his circleโs support.
A dazzling investigation of the tantalizing mystery of an extraordinary man and the tangled roots of his artistry, enriched by frank and intimate testimonies of Kosinskiโs widow, Kiki, his friends and lovers, his editors and โhelpersโ, his defenders and detractors, Jerzy Kosinski is intriguing biography, equal to its subject.