"The future? So far all my plans have always turned up to be for yesterday.”
from an interview published in Paris Review, 1972

Jerzy Kozinski. The name evokes a variety of different thoughts and feelings to everyone. Being both a fiction fan and author, admiration and respect is the two things that come into my mind when I recall his name. As he is one of the most interesting faces of 20th century, every single page he has written and every single step he has taken is worth scrutiny.

As you will read below, his life story is a matter of controversy itself.

Little Jerazy Lewinkopf was born in 1933 in Poland ( that's when Hitler came to power) to a Jewish family. As father Moses Lewinkopf felt the threat waiting for them, he changed their surname into a more Polish-like one, Kosinski.

At this point, we have two different stories in hand. The first, and the widely known one is goes on like this: They sent Jerzy away to one of their closest friends in order to pass out the war. Then, he lived almost the same story we know from the Painted Bird. Throughout the war, he wandered from village to village and one day he lost his speech. Years later, in a skiing accident he regained it. This version of the story bears a perfect similarity to the Jewish kid in the book that brought Kosinski fame, the Painted Bird.

We should take the story of Jerry Park Sloan into account. Sloan is an English professor and he knew Kosinski for about 20 years before his death and he is the author of “Jerzy Kosinski: A biography”. According to Sloan, Moses Kosinski moved the family 120 miles away and did not send Kosinski away. Besides, he says, he adopted the son of a Jewish family. Jerzy was strictly told to deny that he was a Jewish. Doing so, they survived the war until the Soviets took control.

Between 1955 and 1957 he worked in Polish Academy of Sciences as an associate professor, and then he left for United States. He later mentioned this move as “the most creative step in his life-time”. However, at this point, we have one more interesting story.

In Polish Academy of Sciences, he created four fake identities (professors) and with these personalities he created, he corresponded to government and several administrators for two years. And evantually, he got what he had wanted and left Poland. Perhaps this story is what he called the most creative step. What is significant here is, in his novel Cockpit which was published in 1975, a similar story is told by the author.

Once he set his foot in the United States, he worked in several jobs, as a chauffeur, a photographer, etc… During this period of new challenges, he improved his English. Later on, he acquired Ford Scholarship and obtained his doctorate in Sociology.

Meanwhile, under the pseudonym "Joseph Novak”, he wrote two books and they were both non-fiction: The Future Is Ours, Comrade (1960) and No Third Path (1962). Both of the books might even be considered as manifestos against communism. In his future novels, Kosinski was going to display the despise of his past-life in a totalitarian country.   

In 1962, he married to American steel heiress Mary Weir. With this marriage, Kosinski suddenly walked into the world of wealth. They travelled to many countries all around the world either with their private plane or yacht; accomodated in their residences in Paris, London, Pittsburgh and Southampton. Since then for years, he lived a life even he would never had imagined. In 1968, his eighteen year older wife Mary died of cancer. After the death of his first wife, he taught English in Wesleyan, Princeton and Yale.

In 1965,he made a debut with his real name: The Painted Bird. The book had been translated into more than thirty languages. Kosinski just wanted the name “Painted Bird” to remain the same in the target languages the novel was going to be translated into. As the childhood of Kosinski is still a matter of controversy, some classify it as “semi-autobiographical” and some as “fiction”.

In the article “Tainted Words” by Geoffery Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith published in 1982 in the Village Voice, Kosinski was accused of plagiarism. According to the article, Being There was simply a derivative of The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma written by Tadeusz Mostowicz. And that's not the only claim mentioned. The article goes on to accuse Kosinski of using a number of assistants and translators during writing his novels. Finally, it was put forward that Kosinski's childhood was spent completely in a different way than the Painted Bird. Village Voice claimed what Jerry Park Sloan later wrote in his book, that he hadn't been mistreated during the war. As a response, Kosinski told that he had never claimed that the Painted Bird was based on true events.

However, drawing some events from his real life is a common practice for Kosinski. Although he denied to talk about the scenes that corresponds to the events in his real life, we know that there are many, which makes Kosinski even more interesting.

For instance; in 1969 perhaps the most interesting of these events took place. He left Paris for Hollywood on his director friend Roman Polanski's invitation and was expected to arrive at Polanski's residence in Cielo Drive on August 9th. However, in New York, Kosisnki missed a connecting flight due to a luggage problem and spend the night in the city. That night, five people in the house, including Polanski's pregnant wife Sharon Tate, was killed by Charles Manson's gang; which means if Kosinski'd arrived as expected, his story would reach to its end 22 years earlier. The same event is also being related in Blind Date which was published in 1977.

In the other hand, Kosinski never stopped being accused. Some said Kosinski was a perfect liar and builded almost all his life and career on lies. According to Sloan, “there was a hollow space at the center of Kosinski” and this lead him to lie for all his life-time.

In almost his every book, it's not surprising to come across a characther who is an emigrant to United States from a totalitarian country. These characters (George Laventer in Blind Date, Patrick Domostroy in Pinball and the one in Cockpit, for instance) usually praise the environment in the USA and recall their old days in thier old country in dread. And that's one of the reasons some called him anti-Polish.