1982 New York Times article written 4 months before The Village Voice article, 'Jerzy Kosinski's Tainted Words', accused him of fraud and plagiarism.
BEING JERZY KOSINSKI
Published: February 21, 1982
"Many of Jerzy Kosinski's friends are stars - some of them, like Warren Beatty and Tony Bennett, are in show business; some, like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, are in global politics, and some, inevitably, are in journalism and television - such as Mike Wallace, at whose home I first met Kosinski about six years ago. Encouraged by Wallace, Kosinski was telling parts of the story of his life that night. Wallace, no mean master of theatrics himself, knew a spellbinder when he had one at his dinner table. And after I'd listened, enthralled, for several hours, I knew that Kosinski was not only a vintage raconteur, but, probably, the ultimate survivor.
I'm a connoisseur of survivors and have studied them as writers, actors, doctors, cops. And while some of them earn more money, have attained greater eminence or have settled into more traditional life styles than Kosinski, none, I think, had more to endure and overcome. None were damaged, both psychically and physically, as Kosinski was, or are as candid about it - starkly in his fiction, wittily in the drawing room."
Whether or not you admire Kosinski's generally harsh but widely read novels, you have to honor the man for the dangers he has passed, for his rage to live.
As a child of the Holocaust, he routinely held hands with death. A hostage of postwar Communism in Poland, he grew into an intellectual guerrilla and contrived his escape to the United States - where he taught himself English. Awaiting publication of his eighth novel, ''Pinball,'' on March 1, he recently - of all things -made a striking acting debut as the Bolshevik hatchet-man, Zinoviev, in ''Reds,'' the costly film spectacle brought forth by Warren Beatty.
Since arriving in New York in 1957 at the age of 24, a friendless, penniless immigrant, he has published 10 books - the first two were nonfiction works of political science. He arrived a few days before Christmas in an ill-cut coat of wolf's fur, clever enough to know that jars of black caviar were, for their small size, the most nourishing food he could steal from a neighborhood grocery that happened, also, to carry Polish mushrooms (too bulky to steal). Sustained, he quickly went on to learn the language of his new home, work at odd jobs, obtain his American Ph. D., begin a writing career, and - the dream of many a handsome young immigrant - meet and marry a rich American widow..........."
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/21/magaz ... wanted=all
.........and the last dance?
