The story of a falling writer

I have always been fascinated by contradictory personalities. And such was one of my favorite writers – Jerzy Kosinski. I read all his books, listened to all his interviews and saw loads of his photos. I even created some digital art works depicting him with my pen tablet. His story is a spectacular example of a twentieth-century life.Jerzy Kosinski was a survivor who endured many encounters with death and whose life, it seems, was, ironically, shattered by one virulent article. After two journalists from the “Village Voice” questioned Kosinski’s credibility as a writer, the feelings of vacuum, uselessness and meaningless gradually weighed the writer down. It is very likely that the “Village Voice” article with its consequences precipitated, together with the writer’s traumatizing experiences and, perhaps, some dark secrets of his life, a delayed-reaction suicide.At the height of Jerzy Kosinski’s success a scandal tarnished his attentively cultivated myth. In 1982 the “Village Voice” essay challenged the veracity of the writer’s basic account of himself. They questioned his extensive use of private editors in the production of Kosinski’s novels. The journalists also insinuated that Kosinski’s career was jump-started by the CIA. Underlying the uncertainties raised by the “Village Voice” article lurked a core question: was Kosinski of interest only as a phenomenon – an exemplar and symptom of the times – or was he, in spite of all, a serious writer whose work deserved careful and thoughtful examination. The allegations not only had a devastating effect on Kosinski’s career but caused him a great personal pain. His last novel – “The Hermit of 69th Street” – proves it beyond doubt. “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial’ moans Kosinski toward the end of the book quoting Shakespeare. It is the “Village Voice” episode that indirectly gave birth to his final work. And so the novel is primarily an auto-defensive scheme and gigantic project aiming at self-justification. Here Kosinski rationalized the controversy attributing the furor to his detractors, the desire to see idols hurled form pedestals, and by questioning the myth of single authorship.“The Hermit of 69th Street” – Kosinski’s final novel – succeeded in bridging his split identity. The writer, at last, fully embraced the self he had to abandon to survive the war. In “Hermit” he defined his life and selfhood within the framework of Jewish and Polish tradition, effecting reconciliation between the two nations and between two traditions which were at variance within himself. But the book failed to obliterate the charges and their reverberations, and alleviate the distress caused by the “Village Voice” attack as evidenced by the protagonist’s death.