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The Painted Bird is a controversial 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which describes the world as seen by a young black-haired, black-eyed boy who wanders about small towns scattered around Central or Eastern Europe (presumably Poland) during World War II.

Reaction

According to James Park Sloan, some readers initially assumed that Kosiński had written an autobiography, due to "claims" made by the author himself. .

It was viewed by Arthur Miller and Elie Wiesel as one of the most important books in Holocaust literature. Wiesel wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was: "One of the best... Written with deep sincerity and sensitivity." Cynthia Ozick stated she immediately recognized Kosiński's authenticity as "a Jewish survivor and witness to the Holocaust."

Richard Kluger, reviewing it for Harper's Magazine, wrote: "Extraordinary... literally staggering ... one of the most powerful books I have ever read." And John Yardley, reviewing it for The Miami Herald, wrote: "Of all the remarkable fiction that emerged from World War II, nothing stands higher than Jerzy Kosinski'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. The Painted Bird enriches our literature and our lives."

Controversy

Although some readers assumed it was based on the author's experiences during World War II, the book was published and marketed as "fiction." Most of the events depicted are now widely considered to be fictional. It later became clear that Kosiński was neither the boy in the story nor did he share any of the boy's experiences, as revealed in a series of articles in newspapers and books. Norman G. Filkensteinan, assistant professor of political science at DePaul University and a controversial figure himself,, in his VPL lecture broadcasted by the Canadian Shaw Cable in 2006 refers to the book as a "hoax".

Eliot Weinberger has claimed that Kosiński was not the author of the book. Weinberger alleged that Kosinski used several editors to rewrite passages, as - according to Weinberger - he had very little fluent knowledge of English at the time of its writing.

In a Publishers Weekly article, Les Pockell, the editor of Passion Play and The Devil Tree, said that the charges were "totally ludicrous. It's clear no one in the article is asserting that he or she wrote the book." Because Kosinski was "obsessive" about his writing, Pockell continued, "he retained people to copy edit." Pockell told the Los Angeles Times Calendar that he felt the article's authors "played upon the ignorance of the general public about the conventions of publishing," and "to turn Kosinski's working methods into something sinister makes one wonder about their motives."

In a letter to the Village Voice, Austen Olney, editor in chief of Houghton Mifflin, wrote:

"I have been marginally involved with the three Kosinski novels published by Houghton Mifflin and can attest to the fact that he is a difficult and demanding author who makes endless (and to my way of thinking often niggling) corrections in proof. I have been sometimes overwhelmed by his flamboyant conceits and his artful social manipulations, but I have never had any reason to believe that he has ever needed or used any but the most routine editorial assistance. The remarkable consistency of tone in all his novels seems to me sufficient evidence that they all come from his hands alone."

Terence Blacker, an English publisher (who published Kosinski's books) and author of children's books and mysteries for adults, wrote in response to the article's accusations in his article published in The Independent in 2002:

"The significant point about Jerzy Kosinski was that ... his books ... had a vision and a voice consistent with one another and with the man himself. The problem was perhaps that he was a successful, worldly author who played polo, moved in fashionable circles and even appeared as an actor in Warren Beatty's Reds. He seemed to have had an adventurous and rather kinky sexuality which, to many, made him all the more suspect. All in all, he was a perfect candidate for the snarling pack of literary hangers-on to turn on. There is something about a storyteller becoming rich and having a reasonably full private life that has a powerful potential to irritate so that, when things go wrong, it causes a very special kind of joy."

John Corry wrote a 6,000-word feature article in The New York Times in November 1982, responding and defending Kosinski, which appeared on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section. Among other things, Corry alleged that the Voice article had been indirectly inspired by a smear campaign conducted by the Polish Communist government.

Kosiński himself responded that he had never maintained that the book was based on autobiographical events, and by writing The Hermit of 69th Street (1988), in which he sought to demonstrate the absurdity of investigating prior work by inserting footnotes for practically every term in the book.

Themes

The book describes the boy's encounter with peasants engaged in all forms of sexual and social deviance such as incest, bestiality and rape, and in a huge amount of violence – often at the expense of the child. While the book has been said to depict peasants in a derogatory fashion, some argue that it was not a particular social group, but all people, who are viewed as inherently predisposed to cruelty.

The title is drawn from an analogy to human life, described within the book. The boy finds himself in the company of a professional bird catcher. When the man is particularly upset or bored, he takes one of his captured birds and paints it several colors. Then he watches the bird fly through the air in search of a flock of its kin. When it comes upon them, they see it as an intruder and tear at the bird until it dies, falling from the sky.

Criticism

Some argue that the novel has contributed to false impressions of East European peasants. To others, the purpose of the book, from a deontological standpoint, was not to depict the cruelty of one group of people but to show the nature of all humanity, and of all existence, to be cruel.

According to Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski's article, the book deeply offended the members of the Polish farming family who had risked their lives to save Kosiński during the Holocaust. Pogonowski indicates that the family wrote letters of protest to the Polish press in response to the novel.

See also

• Anti-Polonism
• Markowa
• Jerzy Kosinski

Sources

• James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996
• Village Voice, June 1982.
• Eliot Weinberger Genuine Fakes from his collection Karmic Traces; New Directions, 2000.
• Kosinski, Jerzy. The Painted Bird, Grove Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8021-3422-X.

• 1965 novels
• Holocaust literature
• Time Magazine 100 best novels