This article reminded me of Jerzy Kosinski, who supposedly write the surrealistic and moving The Painted Bird¸ a novel about a young boy wandering through Europe during World War II, having to hide in various places before being saved. Kosinski never indicated in the book whether the boy was Jewish or not, calling it instead a metaphor for our times. But even Elie Wiesel took it to be about a Jewish boy. Kosinski never corrected him, and, in fact, claimed the book was autobiographical. Later, it came out that Kosinski had not lived the life he described in the book and may have plagiarized the book from earlier sources, writing it in Polish and having associates translate it into English.

What allowed Kosinski to get away with his hoax for so long, I think, was his magnetic personality. I heard him speak at Harvard in the late 1960s. He was handsome, brooding, mesmerizing, sensitive -- in short, I believed every word he said.

Although he later went on to write Being There, which was also made into a movie, even that book was surrounded by doubts of its authenticity. Kosinski committed suicide at age 58 in 1991.

I don't know anything about allegations of plagiarism. I read The Painted Bird long ago; I can't recall ever thinking it was anything but a work of fiction. It is true that Kosinski was never a homeless child wandering across the countryside. He was, however, a Jewish child living under cover of being Catholic in a country whose Jews were being systematically murdered--and he was old enough to know what was going on. In later years he often mentioned the tension of his childhood as a formative factor. Certainly he knew the experience of being hated because he was different.

Kosinski's best-known falsity (I thought, anyway) was his subsidization by the CIA when he came to the United States. As I recall, the CIA paid him to write a rather literary put-down of communism, purportedly (I think) by a Russian who had lived under it. I believe Kosinski remained on the CIA payroll for several years, although I can't remember anything else substantive he did for them. When this association was first publicized in the 1970's, possibly the worst sin an American intellectual could commit was working for the CIA. Kosinski's literary reputation went right down the drain.

Personally, I never understood that. The Painted Bird, Cockpit and Being There are all quite memorable books, for me anyway. I don't really care whether he told some people they or any of them were autobiographical when they weren't. Plagiarism, of course, is another matter. But before I would believe such an accusation, I would remind myself that intellectuals have been gunning for Kosinski for 30 years. Absent plagiarism, I believe he will eventually be remembered as a minor American writer with a distinctive outlook and style.

Fritz, I just spent some time reading articles on Kosinski I found on Google. They are wildly divergent, either bitterly attacking or fervently defending him. I read about his sexual escapades, his anti-Communism, his lack of a moral core, his pathogical lying, etc. etc. I imagine we'll never know the whole truth, but I think you would enjoy reading some of the articles that agree or disagree with Sloan's damning biography.

I am of two minds when it comes to separting the writer from his/her writings. Ezra Pound, for example. Some lovely poetry from a Nazi supporter. I guess for me personally, being a descendent of Polish peasants, I wonder why Kosinski felt the need to go into such degrading detail about (Catholic) Polish peasants -- especially since he didn't really experience what he writes about in Painted Bird.

Here in Baltimore, a woman who had given speeches to high school classes for years was finally exposed as not being the Holocaust survivor she claimed to be. There's a medical term for a person who's not sick but claims to be and even exhibits some symptoms -- all to gain the attention of others (it's more serious than hypochondria). I sometimes wonder about a similar condition for those who claim to be Holocaust survivors but aren't -- including the two mentioned in the Slate article.

Mary Ann

postscript

We've been having a semi-interesting discussion on the PoemsFray lately about Holocaust poetry. It can be found in the toppost titled "Not a celebration -- poems and a sculpture" by waltz and capsize.

There's a medical term for a person who's not sick but claims to be and even exhibits some symptoms -- all to gain the attention of others (it's more serious than hypochondria).

Mary Ann, maybe you're thinking of Munchausen Syndrome.

So maybe there's an experiential Munchausen's. Lillian Hellman would have to be another one in this list, most notably for her fictional Julia experiences in Pentimento. But Hellman and Kosinski are inherently spinners of tales, and while I have problems with their presenting, or even intimating, fiction as autobiograpy, I'm more interested in people like "Misha," who were retelling their own lives before they ever turned into writers. One of the most prominent recent examples would be Tania Head, the ersatz 9/11 survivor and head of a survivors' network, who made no money from her false claims. There's just something about the world's reverence for participators, voluntary or involuntary, in big history that makes it hard for some people to resist claiming that identity.

Imagine the true tale that De Wael could have written about her experiences; how sad that she apparently desperately needed something else.

Regarding the comment, "...how sad that she apparently desperately needed something else."

What is really sad is that the Jewish community was the only support system strong and loving enough to give her the attention and regard she apparently needed.

The Catholic Church, or any other religious or secular community would have politely listened to her true story and then forgotten about her.

The interesting thing is that she probably could have spoken to the Jewish community, and got just as much attention (including publishing and script-writing), with her true story.

This is the tragedy that Jewish existence seems to bring: Their unique sense of community and support, and willingness to follow up on offers of assistance and mutual uplifting, are the traits that have gotten them hatred and persecution throughout millenia.

When you say "communities," you are speaking in generalities, phil_white99, instead of discussing individual Jews and Catholics who might or might not have responded to her story.

>>There's a medical term for a person who's not sick but claims to be and even exhibits some symptoms -- all to gain the attention of others?<<

It's called being an "Attention Whore".

Boy Howdy

I continue to be amazed at the credulousness of the American public. Kosinski never ceased objecting to people 'authenticating' his book through comparison with his life. If he just gave up & let it happen with TPB, maybe it's because he was too tired & it paid better. Anyway I'm like you, Fritz, I never thought it was anything but fiction (& pretty amazing at that). Can't say with this Bruges lady, not having read her book, but it sounds similar: like everybody wants it to be nonfiction.

docsavage, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia --

Controversy

According to Eliot Weinberger, an American writer, essayist, editor and translator, Kosinski was not the author of The Painted Bird. Weinberger alleged in his 2000 book Karmic Traces that Kosinski was not fluent in English at the time of its writing.]

In a review of Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography by James Park Sloan, D. G. Myers, Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University wrote "For years Kosinski passed off The Painted Bird as the true story of his own experience during the Holocaust. Long before writing it he regaled friends and dinner parties with macabre tales of a childhood spent in hiding among the Polish peasantry. Among those who were fascinated was Dorothy de Santillana, a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, to whom Kosinski confided that he had a manuscript based on his experiences. Upon accepting the book for publication Santillana said, "It is my understanding that, fictional as the material may sound, it is straight autobiography." Although he backed away from this claim, Kosinski never wholly disavowed it."

M. A. Orthofer addressed Weinberger's assertion by saying: "Kosinski was, in many respects, a fake – possibly near as genuine a one as Weinberger could want. (One aspect of the best fakes is the lingering doubt that, possibly, there is some authenticity behind them – as is the case with Kosinski.) Kosinski famously liked to pretend he was someone he wasn't (as do many of the characters in his books), he occasionally published under a pseudonym, and, apparently, he plagiarized and forged left and right."

Oh heavens, Wikipedia! I consider myself duly chastised.

The "everybody" who wanted it to be nonfiction started with the author in this case. She was telling this as her actual past before it became a book, and it's written and published as a nonfiction memoir. It's not a situation where somebody wrote a novel that people are taking as autobiography and then arguing it's not autobiographically correct. This is a woman who has said flat-out and repeatedly that she was Jewish, and she had this happen, and neither of these things are true.

I think it's interesting that Eskin's book about another fake Holocaust memoirist describes his connection to a woman who not only falsely claimed to be a Holocaust survivor but also wrote a book falsely claiming to be a survivor of ritual satanic abuse. Claims of victimhood seem to flock together, I guess.

Norman Finkelstein devoted a portion of "The Holocaust Industry" to Kosinski. I'm not certain whether to pity him or dislike him. Incidentally, Finkelstein, whilst writing a denunciation of Christopher Hitchens, chastised the Hitch for not having Kosinski's "good grace" to do himself in.

Kosinski doesn't even belong in this thread, is all I'm saying. Not that antisemitism is the new white supremecism (although it is).