THE FICTION OF JERZY KOSINSKIs
THE PERVERSE IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION

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MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Mitchell Bernard Bloomfield

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THE FICTION OF JERZY KOSINSKI:
THE PERVERSE IN MODERN IMAGINATION

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Mitchell B . Bloomfield

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\ THE FICTION OF JERZY KOSINSKI:

THE PERVERSE IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION
BY

Mitchell Bernard Bloomfield

The greatest fear of the modern age is the loss or destruction of
self. The contemporary man perceives a world in which institutions and
societies have failed and in which existence itself is understood as
paradoxically founded on nothingness.

In this situation, so Kosinski argues in §£t_9§_thg.§el£, (his
essay on §£gp§), "The original sense of 'creative' becomes completely
reversed; now the only possible creative act, the independent act of
choice and self-enhancement seems to be the destructive act--as in
Sade. . . .In perversion, the negation of 'the creative' becomes
1itera1--an acting out of a more fundamental negation. . ."

The perverse, as this study defines it, is the expression of
that "fundamental negation" in destructive, anti-creative "acts,
practices, or viewpoint(s)." Kosinski's protagonists choose, or are
chosen by, the perverse. They adopt an impersonal generalized hatred
towards the society and institutions which have failed; they reject the
terms of existence by negating their own being and that of others.

Although the Kosinski protagonist chooses the perverse, his

original purpose remains the desire to realize his self, his inner life.

Mitchell Bernard Bloomfield

So, Kosinski's fiction can be understood as a dialectic between that
desire and the choice of the perverse.

The Boy of The Painted Bird desires justice and a community in

 

which he can achieve selfhood but after successive ideologies and
societies have failed him, he emerges filled with hate and adopts a

code of impersonal revenge. The narrator of Steps, so Kosinski tells

us in §£E_o£_the_§elf! is engaged on a "quest in search of inner life";
he wants to rid himself of the "burdens of his past" so that he is

free to act "fully in the present. . ."; yet by "transfering" the burdens
of his past to successive victims and, ultimately, to the reader of the
novel, the narrator attempts to escape the responsibility of his

existence, and thus negates it.

In Being There, "Chance" leaves his prelapsarian garden with the

 

expectation of self-discovery: "By looking at him, others could make
him be clear, could open him up and unfold him, . ." In this case,
Chance, too innocent to choose the perverse, is chosen by it when he
becomes the tool of a society that has inverted the meaning of self
and creativity.

Jonathan Whalen of The Devil Tree hopes through his love relation—

 

ship with Karen to realize his many potential selves. In response to
the failure of that relationship and the futility of discovering his
inner life in a corrupt society, he murders a tedious and foolish
couple who have come to symbolize that society, and then descends into
madness.

It cannot be definitely assumed that Kosinski's idea of self

and inner life is synonymous with what is meant by self-realization, a

Mitchell Bernard Bloomfield

term that incorporates humanistic values. But that is strongly implied
by the essays. The anger and frustration which the choice of the perverse
expresses towards the failure of institutions and an indifferent universe
implies a positive desire for meaning, community and justice--a world

in which the individual man could achieve inner life and freedom.

If so, the choice of the perverse in the face of that desire
constitutes a moral dilemma best described by Camus in Thg_§ebel; The
original motive for rebellion--a stance against the established order--is
the affirmaton of human dignity and freedom; but when rebellion turns
into nihilism (rebellion which knows no limits), it negates its original
intent.

For Camus it is still possible to choose rebellion and reject the
perverse. But in Kosinski's mythology, the historical moment when one
could make the better choice may be past. The choice of the perverse,
then, is a last resort, a final defense of self, usingtfluaonly weapons
left--negation. Yet the desire for the better choice remains: The
perverse also reveals, in its emotional pathology, the despair and

anger of the man who chooses that doctrine while desiring another.

THE FICTION OF JERZY KOSINSKI:
THE PERVERSE IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION
BY

Mitchell Bernard Bloomfield

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English Literature

1975

G COpyright by
MITCHELL BERNARD BLOOMFIELD

1975

For Jan

H.
P.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my committee chairman, William Johnsen,
and committee members, Linda Wagner and Roger Meiners; also Robin
Farbman, John Robison, and Catherine DeVoe for assistance in finding
research materials; and other friends who have furnished material or
spiritual assistance along the way: Evan Jones, Jim Bateman and Linda
Swan, Tom and Mary Edens, Larry Max and Maureen Cavanaugh, Bruce and

Janet Spitz, Steve Scheer, and Nick Mercuro.

I would also like to thank my parents Philip and Dorthy Bloomfield

of St. Petersburg, Florida, who have encouraged and assisted me from

the beginning.

iii

TABLE

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . .

 

 

Chapter
1 The Painted Bird . .
2 §£gp§_. . . . . . . .
3 Being There . . . . .
4 The Devil Tree . . .

 

CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . .

APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . .

OF CONTENTS

iv

26

47

76

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116

120

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Introduction

Every age has its own nightmare and fantasy. Expressed in
literature these often take the form of apocolyptic visions, and their
function, as in the indiviudal psyche, is to resolve the conflict
between what is dreaded and what is actually desired by making that
which is dreaded "actual" in the imagination.

The Greeks, for example, having established democratic government
based on law, and having a more than ordinary awareness of what they
had created, feared a lapse back into barbarism, a fear that is expressed
and resolved in Aeschylus' Oresteia. Marlowe and Goethe's versions of
Faust expresses the fear of future possibilities brought about by the
collapse of the medieval order and the advent of the new learning. In
both cases, dread arises out of the stress of historical processes.

For the individual psyche, nightmares, dreams, and fantasies
are part of the same project--to reconcile wish to fact. When they are
embodied in literature they serve the same function for the collective
mind of the society in which they appear. If the nightmare expresses
fear, the fantasy expresses desire,for in the fantasy--the waking dreams-
the dreamer is in control, which may explain why the fantasy is more
often a rewarding experience than the nightmare. The fantasy resolves
the conflict in favor of the self; that is, the fantasy asserts the
power and control of the self. The fantasy, by its nature, most
resembles comic genres, while the nightmare is kin to naturalistic-
tragedy. Because the fantasy is, in principle, freed from the

1

constraints of real solutions, it is worked out in extreme or radical
terms. This extremity reveals, among other things, the intense frus-
tration of the dreamer and the powerful desire to definitively resolve
the disparity between wish and fact.

In literature the nightmare and the fantasy often appear together
as aspects of the dramatic opposition: in the case of Faust, his rise
to the heights is a fantasy of personal power; his fall a nightmare
of an outraged order.

The modern nightmare is the loss or destruction of self. The
modern man perceives a collapsing universe which offers no external
structures which might enable him to define himself; a society over—
grown with institutions which define him, but only as a unit of a
collective; an intellectual climate in which the dominant philosophy,
scientific materialism, at a loss to assign an empirical value to
self, cannot account for his existence; an age when culture
has physically assailed existence, so that he perceives government,
law, and technology as agents of death rather than instruments of life.

This study, devoted to the fiction of Jerzy Kosinski, examines
a particular response to the world as modern man perceives it--the
"perverse", the definition of which I take from Kosinski himself--the
inversion of the normal human instincts for creativity and pro-creativity.
In the perverse response, destruction is valued over creation, hate over

love, alienation over community. Since the traditional humanistic

 

values are perverted, or inverted,nggation is the essence of the perverse.
The perverse can be an actual response, a course of action that
the man adopts. As such it is generically related to modern nihilism

and the more radical political philosophies of revolution. For the mass

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of civilized middle—class society, however, it remains, for the time
being, only an imaginative solution (a fantasy) to the historical
dilemma they feel. So while the nightmare of our age is loss of self
and the collapse of external order, the fantasy is a descent into
perversity or the choice of perversity. A growing literature--both
serious and popular--now incorporates this fantasy: such novels as

Nbrman Mailer's American Dream, James Dickey's Deliverance, or Susan

 

 

Sontag's Death Kit, continuing, in American fiction, the tradition of
Gide, Kafka, Celine, Genet, and Sartre, and earlier of Baudelaire,
Rimbaud and the English decadents; such recent American films, as

Sam Peckinpah's Strawdogs, Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange based

 

on Anthony Burgess' novel, Jules Feiffer's Little Murders, as well as

 

less distinguished films like Rage and Death-Wish.‘ If there is, in fact,

 

a "literature of the perverse", the fiction of Jerzy Kosinski is
central to the genre, for there the fantasy of the perverse response

is directly and powerfully expressed with little moral qualification.1

1Kosinski's works, in these editions, will be cited throughout
this study.

Th§_grt_9§_the Self, Essays a Propos Steps, New York: Scientia-
Factum, 1968. Also published in Exile, Vol. 1, No. 1, York University:
Toronto. [For convenience abbreviated A£E_in footnotes; Exile edition
will be used.]

Being_There, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971. [For convenience
abbreviated to §T_in footnotes.]

"Children of TV," Destination Tomorrow, Jack Carpenter, ed.,
Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown, 1973: pp. 327-328.

The Devil Tree, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. [For
convenience abbreviated to 23 in footnotes.] '

The Future i§_0urs, Comrade, Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday,
1960. [Published under the pseudonym Joseph Novak.]

"The Lone Wolf," American Scholar, (Autumn 1972): PP- 513-514,
515-516.

513 Third Path, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1962. [Published
under the pseudonym Joseph Novak.]

Notes 9£_the Author 22_the Painted Bird, New York, Scientia-
Factum, 1965. Also published in Exile, Vol. 1, No. 2, York University:

 

 

 

 

 

 

4
ii
The impulse for the perverse arises from the historical situation--

the contemporary understanding that human existence and existence in
general is founded on "nothingness; and in response to what contemporary
man perceives as the progressive failure of institutions and civilization.
The choice of the perverse however, is not only ideological, it is pro-
foundly emotional, for it expresses the anger and frustration of con-
temporary man at his situation as he perceives it.

Although Kosinski's protagonists choose the perverse (or are

chosen by it, as in the case of "Chance" in Being There) they desire

 

a kind of "self-realization." In certain ways, this desire seems to
enter into Kosinski's own thinking. For example, in the passage from
"The Art of the Self, Essay a Propos Steps? where Kosinski defines the
perverse, he says:

. . .now the only possible creative act, the independent

act of choice and self-enhancement, seems to be the

destructive act--as in Sade.
By "now" Kosinski means, of course, the contemporary world where
". . .the greatest sources of sin are those formerly protective agencies
like society and religion." [Ibid.] What one desires, however, as this
passage clearly implies is non-perverse creativity, choice and self-
enhancement.

Accepting these definitions for the moment, we could understand

Kosinski's novels as a dialectic between the desire for self-realization

and an impulse for the perverse in a world where self-realization is

 

Taronto. [For convenience abbreviated to Notes in footnotes; Exile
edition will be used.]
"Packaged Passion," American Scholar, (Spring, 1973), pp. 194-

 

204.
The Painted Bird, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
Steps, New York: Random House, 1968.

 

impossible: The Boy of The Painted Bird, subjected to continual brutality

 

and enforced alienation, chooses a code of impersonal revenge. In doing
so he adopts the code of the adult world he has experienced. The pro-
tagonist of Stgp§_has adopted the perverse before the beginning of the
novel and acts out his choice through a series of episodes; the "theme"
of the novel, then, is the dynamics of the perverse and, by inference,

the ontological conditions that underly them. In Beigg There the hero

 

Chance, incapable of choice, does not choose the perverse; he is chosen

by it. Jonathan Whalen of The Devil Tree embarks on a project of self-

 

realization but is dragged down by the past (itself a symbol of a
perverse society) and by the emptiness of contemporary life; in response
he chooses the perverse, signalled by the murder of a man and wife who
have come to symbolize that emptiness.

Again, if we accept this definition of self-realization, it is
clear that there is a fundamental contradiction between that desire and
the choice of the perverse. As Camus argues in The Rebel, rebellion-~the
rejection of the established order begins as an altruistic gesture, an
affirmation of the dignity of the individual. But when rebellion
turns into nihilism--rebellion which knows no limits--it denies its
original humanistic impluse:

It is possible to say that rebellion, when it develops into
destruction, is illogical. Claiming the unity of the human
condition, it is a force of life, not death. Its most pro-
found logic is not the logic of destruction; it is the logic
of creation. . . .Nihilistic passion, adding to falsehood and
injustice, destroys in its fury its original demands and thus

deprives rebellion of its most cogent reasons [The Rebel, 9p.
cit., pg. 285].

If we could be certain that Kosinski‘s fiction is a dialectic between

the desire forsmflferealizationand the impulse towards the perverse,
he would be open to the criticism that he fails to see the implications
of that choice, or that if he does, he fails to incorporate those
implications into his fiction, and by doing so, provide the kind of
moral framework that critics find lacking in his fiction.

It is very possible that Kosinski sees the contradiction between
the desire for self-realization and the choice of the perverse as a
necessary paradox: that is, that the descent into the perverse is the
necessary first step towards eventual self-realization. If so, such
a philosophy resembles Romatic creeds of redemption through sin as in
Dostoevsky. And like the earlier Romantic creeds, it has its dangers--

the saint who emerges from depravity, like Dimitri of The Brothers

 

Karamazov, is a rare being. Finally, even if Kosinski is not pointing
towards eventual redemption in the humanistic sense, he may at least
suggest that the moral dilemma is part of the mystery of all human
action and understanding.

Another dimension of Kosinski's work is directly related to both
the question of self and the moral ambiguities of contemporary life:
Kosinski‘s work seems heavily influenced by the existential writers,
particularly Heidegger and Sartre. I do not mean by this merely that
Kosinski's fiction reflects the historical tone or ethical tone of
modern life-*although that is true--but rather that his fiction appears
to incorporate very specific, technical and systematic ontological

ideas, so much so that at least two of his novels, Steps and Being There

 

appear to be based on a philosophic substructure. Kosinski's essays

on The Painted Bird and Steps reinforce this interpretation.

 

 

 

 

 

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Existential ontology is particularly relevant to the problem
of self and self-realization because the method of that ontology is
phenomenological; that is, it begins with an analysis of perception;
i.e., the experience of mind perceiving phenomenae. Because existential
ontology is experience centered, it leads directly to a consideration
of the self in the midst of the world--what Heidegger means by dasein
(being-there) and what Sartre means by being-in-the-world.

If, in fact, Kosinski does view the desire for self-realization
and the impulse for perverse as the opposite legs of a paradox, exis—
tential ontology confirms that the paradox may be unresolvable. The
very nature of existence is a paradox: the self comes into existence
as an act of negation.

While we will find that existential ontology will be helpful in
understanding many of Kosinski's ideas, this does not mean that they
are always compatible or that Kosinski is engaging in didactic repeti-
tion. For example, although Kosinski alludes to Sartre often in App

of the Self, he takes pains to differentiate his own idea of love from

-—’

 

that of Sartre's, and altogether it seems an improvement. In the same
essay he refers to Camus' arguments against murder but apparently
rejects Camus' similar argument against suicide when he (Kosinski) says
of man: ". . .to die in one's own time is to affirm that dignity."

It is not easy to say what the existential writers would think of
Kosinski's morality--Kosinski does not show himself clearly on this
point. Even in the essays, his attitudes are veiled in ambiguities
and contradicitons. At some points he seems to endorse the actions of

his protagonists--especially the protagonist of Steps--at other times

he seems to condemn them, sometimes in the same breath. It is easier

to say what the existentialists would say about the moral condition
protagonists. As I suggested earlier, Camus would judge the choice

of the perverse morally inconsistent with a desire for integrity and
freedom. Similarly, Sartre would judge it as a retreat from responsible
freedom, and therefore, "inauthentic."

Whether Kosinski would agree with these evaluations is incon-
clusive, and this returns us to what I believe is the central problem
in Kosinski's work: the ambiguity of his own stance.

My own opinion is that Kosinski writes from the position of a
moral dilemma similar at least to the one I have outlined here: The
contemporary man desires a kind of "self-realization"; his desire is
frustrated or "turned aside" by the collapse of external values, by
the failure of institutions and society, by the perception, or con-
viction, that nothingness lies at the core of being; in response he
chooses the perverse; but in doing so he negates his original impulse;
this is the dilemma.

Undoubtedly, it is a personal one for Kosinski which might
explain the ambiguities he displays in both his fiction and in his
essays when he comes close to implications of the perverse.

It would be unreasonable to expect Kosinski to resolve this
dilemma; however, he could make it apparent; that is, make it the
thematic heart of his fiction. I think his failure to do this may be

his single large fault as a writer.

iii

The method of this study is not, in any important way, biographical.
Nonetheless, a biography is somewhat obligatory in a study devoted to
the work of one man; and there are always insights to be had. Kosinski's
biography presents special problems. Although he has recently shown a
desire to set the record straight in regard to facts about his life, he
has not done so in the past. As a result, speculation, rumor, and
assumption have filled the gaps. In this respect I am no better off
than other writers. I have pieced together what follows from the
sources which seem to me the most authoritative and dependable.3
Naturally I have my own speculations and I have done my best to separate
them from facts.

Kosinski, himself, denies that his work is autobiographical. He

presents, in Notes p£_the Author, an extensive analysis of the aesthetic

 

process by which the author transforms his experience and memories
into fiction. Part of this process is alienation from the remembered
experience: ". . .the writer comes to stand outside the experience he
intends to mirror in his book." As for the relationship between the

actual and the fictive event, Kosinski says this:

3The biographical information in this section was compiled from
the following selected sources:

Cleveland Amory, "Trade Winds," Saturday Review, April 17, 1971
[Interview].

Henry Allen, washington Post, August 30, 1971 [Interview].

Contemporary_Authors, Volumes 17/18, Gale Research Company, Detroit,
Michigan.

Current Biggraphy, March 1974.

Publishers' Weekly, "Authors and Editors," Vol. 199, No. 17,
(April 26, 1971) [Interview].

Paris Review, No. 54, Summer 1972, "The Art of Fiction XLVI,"
by George A. Plimpton and Rocco Landesman, pp. 183-207 [Interview].

 

 

 

 

 

 

10

As an actor playing Hamlet is neither Hamlet nor merely an
actor, but rather, an actor as Hamlet, so is a fictive event
neither an actual event, nor totally a created fiction with
no base in experience; ip_i§’ap_event a§_fiction [Notes, pg.
85].

 

In transmuting the event into fiction, the artist uses mental
patterns, "molds" which simplify, shape and give them (events) an

acceptable emotional clarity. "The remembered event becomes a fiction,

 

g_structure made £p_accommodate certain feelings."

 

In fact, there are strong parallels between Kosinski's life and
his fiction.
Jerzy Nikodem Kosinski was born on June 14, 1933 in Lodtz, Poland,
the son of Mieczylaw and Elzbeita (Liniecka) Kosinski.
Although Kosinski was born in Poland, he describes his parents
as "Russian." Presumably they were Russians emigrated to Poland.
Kosinski, who rarely discusses his early life, made an exception
in his interview with Cleveland Armory. Here we learn that his mother
was a concert pianist who was not allowed to perform in public (not
allowed by whom is never explained), and that his father was a classics
scholar by avocation:
Take my father. He was born in Russia. He saw the Revolution
of 1905, then world War I, then he escaped from Russia during
the Bolshevik Revolution, and then he lived through the Second
Wbrld War. So if anyone had a reason to be fed up, he had.
And he withdrew from the Twentieth Century altogether. He
studied Ancient Greece, and the origin of the European languages.
It was his escape device. He did have one narrow field of

commerical excellence, though. He was an expert in the manu-
facture of felt. I have a similar way to survive, photographic

ll

chemistry. If I have twenty minutes' warning, I can go to
work on it and support myself [Amory, Saturdangeview, 9p,
cit.].

 

Kosinski's early life parallels the experience of the Boy of The Painted

 

Bigd, Like his protagonist, Kosinski was separated from his parents when
the Nazis took Poland. His parents sent him to live with a foster
mother in Eastern Poland, but she died two months after the six-year—old
Kosinski arrived. For the next three years he wandered through this
remote area and learned to survive. The peasants, on one occasion,
tried to drown him and he has retained a fear of water ever since,
although he is reportedly an avid swirrmer. And, like his protagonist,
Kosinski lost his voice and lived as a mute for a period of time. At
the end of the war, Kosinski was re-united with his parents. Later
he began what was to become a distinguished academic career.

In Poland, Kosinski studied at the University of Lodtz where
he received an M.A. in history in 1953 and an M.A. in political science
in 1955. From 1950 to 1956 he was employed as a ski instructor, during
the winter seasons, in Zakopane, an experience which probably furnished

the materials for the end of The Painted Bird as well as several

 

episodes of Spepg, In warsaw, from 1955 to 1957, Kosinski studied

sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In addition, he studied
photographic chemistry as a minor subject. The safety and isolation
of the darkroom became an actual haven for him from the pressures of

collective life in Poland, and finally, in his own words, a "metaphor."

The photographic darkroom emerged as a perfect metaphor for
my life. It was the one place I could lock myself in (rather
than being locked in) and legally not admit anyone else. For
me it became a kind of temple [Paris Review, pp, gi£,].

 

12

While Kosinski studied sociology (from 1955-57), he also held the posi-
tion of assistant professor of sociology at the Institute of the History
of Culture at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. This position
made it possible for him to travel to Russia where he studied 19th
century history at Lononosov University in 1957, shortly before he came
to the United States.

The experience in Russia provided the material for the two non-
fiction works Kosinski later wrote in the U.S. under the pseudonym,
Joseph Novak. In these books one sees the rudiments of his fictional
style; more important,one recognizes characters and stories which later

appear in his novels. For example, the episode in The Painted Bird

 

from which the novel takes its name is taken from an anecdote related

to Kosinski by Varia, a Russian girl Kosinski meets in Moscow:

I remember how once a group of us kids caught a sparrow in

a trap. He struggled with all his might--tiny heart thumping
desperately--but I held on tight. We then painted him purple
and I must admit he actually looked much better--more proud

and unusual. After the paint had dried we let him go to rejoin
his flock. We thought he would be admired for his beautiful
and unusual coloring, become a model to all the gray sparrows
in the vicinity, and they would make him their king. He rose
high and was quickly surrounded by his companions. For a few
moments their chirping grew much louder and the--a small

object began plummeting earthward. We ran to the place where
it fell. In a mud puddle lay our purple sparrow--dead. His
blood mingling with the paint. . . .The water was rapidly
turning a brownish-red. He had been killed by the other sparrows,
by their hate for color and their instinct of belonging to a
gray flock. Then, for the first time, I understood. . . [No
Third Path, pp, pip,, pp. 106-7].

 

 

Kosinski's departure from Poland at the close of 1957 makes a
story bizarre enough for any of his fiction. To evade a suspicious

Polish bureaucracy and their restrictive immigration policy, Kosinski

l3

invented a fictitious "Chase Manhattan" grant for study in the U.S. To
recommend him for permission to leave Poland. Kosinski also invented
four professors, each with his own stationary, signature, telephone
voice, etc.: "It involved two years of planning and some bureaucratic
fraud, and the penalty for capture was approximately 12 to 15 years

in prison. . .if I had been caught, I would have removed myself, one

way or another." [Publishers' Weekly, pp, cit.]. According to Kosinski,

 

he carried a cyanide capsule in his pocket during this period as his
insurance against a Polish prison.
On several occasions Kosinski has gone out of his way to emphasize

that the United States was really his third choice:

I aimed at three countries: At Argentina, at Brazil and at
the United States, in that order. The first two would not
take me because I had a Marxist background. . . .Essentially,

I aimed at large, new societies, and I felt that I could

in some way therefore disregard environment and be disregarded,
be left alone [Publishers' Weekly, pp, pip31.

 

In any case, Kosinski arrived in the U.S. at the age of 24 with
his clothing and little money. He did not speak English. There followed
various odd jobs--paint-scraper on excursion-line boats, truck driver,
chauffeur, and photographer--a transition which furnishes the basis
for several episodes of §ppp§, But by July 1958, Kosinsky had arranged
for a real grant--from the Ford Foundation (1958-1960). He studied at
both the New School for Social Research (New York) and Columbia
University where he was enrolled in a doctoral program in sociology.
While studying at Columbia, Kosinski was engaged in learning English
and writing his two nonfiction works. Explaining his use of a pseudonym

for those works, Kosinski says:

14

My former experience had taught me that when you are a student
you are not supposed to write books, you are supposed to read
them [Publishers' Weekly, pp, cit.].

Kosinski developed a remarkable way to get criticism of his first
attempts at English prose. He would call a New York long distance
operator and ask her if she would mind listening to what he had written
and offer suggestions. Not only were the operators willing, they
would often call back to hear more of his writing.

Kosinski now writes only in English. The newness of the language
has special importance for him. It represents an escape from the
restrictions and impediments of the European tradition, as well as a
means of distancing himself from the memories of his own past--pre-
sumably so that remembered event can be transmuted to fictive event:

Once you begin to write in another language, you discover
how much freer you are, because the new language disconnects
you, and requires from you-~because you do not know all the
cliches yet--some of your own. . . .One is removed from one's
Pavlovian restraints, so to speak. The new language has
brought for you a new evocative power; it can evoke your
imaginary states but not your traumatic states. . . .when I
am approached by someone who speaks to me suddenly in Polish:

My whole manner changes. I get more rigid, my neck is stiffer,
I am more European.[Interview with Publishers' Weekly].

His marriage to Mary Hayward Weir in January 1962 was the result
of a relationship that began when she sent him a fan letter after the

publication of The Future ip_0urs, Comrade. Kosinski's involvement

 

 

with Mary Weir and the Weir family is suggestive and fascinating. Mary
Hayward was ninteen years old when in 1941 she became the third wife

of Ernest weir, then sixty-six, a Pittsburgh industrialist and founder
of the National Steel Corporation.

Weir died in 1975. When Mary Weir married Kosinski in 1962 he was

15

twenty nine, she was forty. Together they travelled throughout the
world and cruised the Mediterranean on her yacht. Of this period
Kosinski recalls, ". . .I was broke from spending all my own money on
tips." [Washington Post, pp, pip.] Mary Weir committed suicide in

1968. There were no children, possibly because of Kosinski's attitude

 

towards that subject which he expressed in the Paris Review interview:

. . .my orbit does not make provision for the giving of life."

Although two of his books, Np_Third Path (1962) and The Painted

 

 

Bird (1965) bear warm inscriptions to Mary Weir, Kosinski's only
published reference to their relationship is made with the cold eye of
the practicing sociologist:

. . .a wealthy, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant who grounded

me very definitely in purely American experience. [Paris

Review, pp, cit.].

His involvement with Mary Weir and the corporate world to which

she introduced Kosinski provides the groundwork for his most recent

novel, The Devil Tree. The characters also bear a close resemblance

 

to the Weir family. The description of Whalen Sr. comes almost verbatim
from an unusual and admiring article which Kosinski wrote about Ernest

. 4 . . .
Weir. Jonathan's mother, like Mary Weir, travels around the world with

4Jerzy Kosinski, "The Lone Wolf," American Scholar, (Autumn, 1972)
pp. 513-514, 516-519. In the passage I am thinking of, Kosinski describes
weir this way:
". . .when he was fifteen he was employed at three dollars a
week in the Braddock Wire Company, doing work, as Weir recalled,
that nobody else wanted to do. In 1901 he became chief clerk
of the Monongahela Tin Plate Mills and a few years later, at
the age of twenty-eight, was named the general manager of Monessen
Mills. . . .Weir was an avid reader of nineteenth century English
novels. Perhaps it was from them that he acquired a sense of
destiny."

Compared to these passages from The Devil Tree:

 

 

16

a scholar-lover (Kosinski, perhaps?) and later commits suicide. Whether
or not Jonathan, the protagonist, is modelled after Ernest and Mary
Weir's actual son (David M. Weir II) is purely speculative. It is likely,
however, that the character of Jonathan is a combination of an actual
family member and Kosinski himself. In any case, it is clear that :22.

Devil Tree, like Kosinski's other work is more a "transmutation" of

 

remembered event to fictive event than pure imagination.

In 1966 Kosinski published his first novel, The Painted Bird,

 

which was a critical and, moreover, a commercial success. A series

of prizes, grants, and academic positions followed. The Painted Bird

 

won Le Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France (1966). In 1967
Kosinski was awarded a Guggenheim for creative writing. In 1968 he was
appointed a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies at wesleyan
university, Middletown Connecticut, and in the same year, he published
Spppp_for which he won the National Book Award in 1969. Following his
stay at wesleyan, Kosinski taught at Princeton University as writer in
residence (1969-70), and then at Yale (1970-73) from which he is now
on a leave of absence. In 1970, he won an Award in Literature from

the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of
Arts in Letters; in the same year he was awarded the John Golden

Fellowship in Playwriting. He published Beipg_There, his third novel

 

in 1971 and The Devil Tree, his fourth, in 1974. He has recently com-

 

pleted a fifth novel, Cockpit, which will be published in the fall

of 1975.

 

". . .Sumner Whalen got his first job as an office boy with
an aluminum company at four dollars and eighty-five cents

a week. Advancing rapidly to positions of increasing respon-
sibility, Mr. Whalen became a plant manager at the age of
twenty three. . . .(He). . .read Dickens for inspiration and
listened to Bach's Tbccata and Fugue in D minor at least once
a day." [The Devil Tree, pg. 130].

 

17

The best picture of Kosinski's personal life comes from the Henry
Allen interview which is now dated (1971). At that time Kosinski was
living near the Yale University campus in New Haven. He had not re-
married at that time, but his companion for several years had been
Katherine von Frauhofer, (Kiki) with whom he shared the small apartment
Allen described. Allen's interview suggested an austere kind of life,
shorn of any extraneous matters, and a singular personality.

Currently Kosinski spends most of his time in New York, where
from all outward appearances he is deeply involved in a large scope
of activities. He is president of the American center of P.E.N. an
international association of writers, director of the International
League for the Rights of Man, Member of the Board, The National Writers
Club. Unlike most other writers of his stature, he does not disdain
the unions and professional organizations peopled by less prestigious
talents; for example he holds membership in the American Association of
University Professors, The Authors League and The American Translators
Association.

He is also personally involved in a publishing venture, Spientia-
Factum.which specializes in philosophical essays, among which are

Kosinski's own on the The Painted Bird and Steps.

 

Kosinski as a personality strongly resembles his fictional pro-
tagonists. What he shares with them is a prediclection for the bizarre,
a willingness--perhaps a compulsion to seek it out, to interpose
himself in strange situations and the lives of strangers, a desire and
talent to manipulate, and an overriding pre-occupation with privacy,

secrecy and instant mobility--a kind of contemporary "paranoia."

18

Several of the episodes in his biography illustrate these traits--
his method of escape from Poland, for example, especially his claim
that he carried a capsule of cyanide with him during that time. Another
incident observed by Henry Allen during his interview of Kosinski

illustrates the same tendencies:

In a restaurant. . .Kosinski is disgusted by a fat man who
engorges half the menu. Kosinski hates fat--eating, in
fact--and can sit in a restaurant hissing to Kiki: 'Look at
that one, she must weigh 300 pounds. And that one, my God,
he must weigh. . ."

He consistently overestimates their weights by at least
100 pounds. He gives none of them more than 10 years to
live.

Anyhow, he observes the fat man eating everything but the
tablecloth, only to have fetched to him a giant chocolate
cake. It's the crumb that breaks the camel's back.
Kosinski summons his waiter, orders another cake carried to
the man's table. The fat man is delighted. Kosinski joins
in a pas de deux of smiles and waves, then watches him

eat it.

When the fat man has patted the last crumb into his mouth
Kosinski stops at his table.

The fat man glows with gratitude. No one, it seems, has

ever in his life done such a thing for him. 'You are very

fat,‘ Kosinski replies, it will kill you. I bought you

the cake simply to see if you would eat it. And because

I might see you die before my eyes.‘ [Washington Post,

pp, cit.]

Aside from authorial eccentricity, this anecdote reveals an edge

of cruelty and suggests the manipulative qualities of the narrator
of Steps. It is interesting in this regard that Kosinski mentions

that his students have accused him of manipulation, although his

purposes, Kosinski maintains, are moralistic:

19

When you confront someone directly, as I often do my students,
they become very upset, and once in awhile violent. They
claim I am manipulating them. But you aim at the primary
truth: Why do you get up in the morning? Why don't you kill
yourself? What sense is there in doing what you are doing?
[Publishers' Weekly].

 

A penchant for manipulation would also explain, in a sense,
Kosinski's theory of the relationship between author and reader. He
intends, so he explains in 1231'; pg 93.9. £113.! to "subvert" the reader,
to seduce and entrap him into an aesthetic experience no doubt for
the same reasons that he "manipulates" his students--to "aim at the
primary truth" that will ultimately undermine his ideas of the world.
As we will see in Chapter 2, this credo explains the design of Spppp,

In the Paris Review interview, Kosinski discusses his "paranoia."
He mentions the darkroom which he describes as a "metaphor for my
life," and adds, "The darkroom remains even today my device for escape
from the ideologies of political terror."

At the time of that interview, Kosinski had discovered another
use for his darkroom. Shortly before he had learned that his eyesight
was in danger. Anticipating the possibility that he would go blind,
Kosinski began to practice dictating to a tape recorder in the darkroom;

While dictating in darkness I noticed I developed a new
kind of freedom--the tape recorder prose seems to be looser,
less controlled than the typewriter prose of gpppp, for
instance, or Being_There. . . .All I wanted to do was to

permit my 'vision,' born in a darkroom, this inner vision,
to reach the tape recorder.

 

When the interviewer asks Kosinski what he does with the manu-
script, Kosinski replies,

I put them away in a bank vault. I am secretive. I close
things. I lock them. I have fifteen different places
where my things are hidden. Some of the bank vaults where
I send the drafts are almost bigger than my apartment. I

20

am always afraid that some societal force will go after
me, and will try to penetrate not only my apartment--let
them do it!--but my inner life, which is reflected in my
writing and in my letters.

The desire for instant mobility, for secrecy, is further illustrated

by an incident recorded by Cleveland Amory in his interview. Kosinski
had earlier explained to Amory and his assistant that he had developed
the ability to hide, or "disappear" in his own apartment any time he
chose:

Before saying goodbye to Mr. Kosinski, we demanded a first-

hand look at his disappearance act. Miss von Fraunhofer

ushered us down the hall, while Mr. Kosinski hid. Then we

came back. We looked everywhere very carefully--in the closets,

under the sofa, behind every cabinet, even in the darkroom.

There was no question, the author of Being There wasn't there.
We gave up.

 

At that point, out came Mr. Kosinski. 'Once,' he told us,
'I hid for a whole weekend. I came out only for food and
work. People were in and out too, but they never found me.‘

Of all the published anecdotes about Kosinski, this strikes me as
the most revealing. One has a glimpse here of the child that Kosinski
was, a child for whom the ability to hide was more than a parlor game.
For the adult, as well as the child, his display of that skill reminds

the community around him (and himself) that he remains marginal, that

he is beyond their power to touch him.

iv
The criticism on Kosinski is not extensive. At present only one
full length study is devoted to his work, an unpublished dissertation
by David Lipani.5 Two other unpublished dissertations include chapters

5David J. Lipani,"Jerzy Kosinski: A Study of His Novels,"Bowling
Green State University, 1973.

21

on Kosinski.6 Articles in scholarly journals and literary reviews number
a little less than a dozen. Book reviews, of course, are copious and
spand a wide range of quality. It would be difficult, and probably
unenlightening, to group what is available according to a "school" or
“approach." The Kosinski canon is simply not large enough, nor are

the number of critics who have written about it. Kosinski himself, in

his two essays (Notes pg the Author and the Art p£_the Self) remains

 

his own most intelligent critic.

The most problematic area for Kosinski's critics and reviewers is
that of the moral implications of his fiction.

While critics admire Kosinski's work, they have misgivings about
it. They want to know: Is Kosinski promoting amorality, nihilism,
the perverse? Is he talking about collective (social) guilt or is
this immaterial? Does he hope for some kind of personal or social
redemption? All of this is disturbing to most critics who are--despite
their frequent claims of intellectual toughness and pragmatism--none-
theless solidly within the liberal tradition.

There are those who find no relief in Kosinski's dark view and
fault him for it. Geoffrey Wolff, for example, writing a review of

Steps in The New Leader [October 7, 1968, pp. 18-19] devotes himself

 

to the moral issue: Conceding that the novelist has no obligation to

6Robert E. Goldren,"Violence and Art in Postwar American Litera-

ture: A Study of O'Connor, Kosinski, Hawkes, and Pynchon," The Univer-
sity of Rochester, 1972. Also see, Sharon Rosenbaum Weinstein,

"Comedy and Nightmare: The Fiction of John Hawkes, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
Jerzy Kosinski, and Ralph Ellison,"University of Utah, 1971.

22

represent the external world truly, Wolff concludes that, nonetheless,
the reader has the right to judge the internal truth of the fictional
world the writer has created. On these grounds, Wolff concludes that
Kosinski is irresponsible--". . .power abused is power abandoned, in
art if not in life."

Others express the hope that Kosinski is expressing something
more than the dark vision that seems to dominate his novels; but

usually they are uncertain as to what it could be. Irving Howe [pp, cit.]

remarks that,

. . .one must also remind oneself that the kind of aesthetic

discipline that goes into a book like Steps is made possible
only by an urgent moral passion, even if for the moment

unclear or invisible.
The desire to find that moral position and the humanistic bias
of most critics leads some to untenable conclusions--Daniel Cahill for
example. ["Jerzy Kosinski: Retreat from Violence," TWentieth Century

Literature, 18, April, 1972]. After a lengthy exposition of the dark

 

vision of Steps, Cahill then says:

If one accepts the novel as the sole document for interpre-
tation, the moral evaluation of man is an unrelieved black-
ness. . . .Convinced that Jerzy Kosinski is both a serious
and a profound writer, one searches the novels for signs of
this affirmative spirit, the belief that man can retreat
from a violent devitalization.

The fallacy here is obvious: seriousness and profundity in a writer are
synonymous with Cahill's desire for humanistic assurances. In this frame

of mind a critic will sieze on the slenderest hope as Cahill does:

23

It is only when one turns to the epigraph of Steps7 (taken
from the sacred book, The Bhpgavad Gita) that one can dis-
cern a glimmer of the author's intent. . . .The moral equi-
pose which Kosinski seeks is the ascendent step, a direction
opposite from that which he fictionalizes, a new world in
which the control, peace, and happiness of The Bhagavad Gita
is restored to the life of man.

 

But for the protagonist of Steps, control is the manifestation

 

of a spiritual disease, as Howard Harper correctly argues [Contemporary
Literature, 12, Spring, 1971, pp. 213-214]. Therefore, the epigraph

on which Cahill hangs his hopeful argument is, in large part ironic,

or at best, paradoxical; the control described by The Baggvad Gita

is different in quality from the control exercised by the protagonist
of ppppp.

A similar bias--a desire to mitigate Kosinski's black vision--
appears to animate David Lipani's study ["Jerzy Kosinski: A Study of
His Novels,"Bow1ing Green, 1973]. Lipani argues that the main thrust
of Kosinski's life and work is the concern for the liberty of the self
which is threatened by totalitarian government and authoritarian society.
Therefore, Lipani focuses on what is in fact a central issue in Kosinski's
fiction-~the idea of self:

The evolution and the machinations of self, the endeavor
to ascertain and establish one's identity, the individual
conscience in conflict with mass norms: this is the core

of the Kosinski canon. . . .In his fiction Kosinski probes
the victim/oppressor relationship, the power of love, hate,

7For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled
is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration
there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?

 

 

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tic
ual
the
vat

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nor

cogent;
it fits
success
Kosinsk
traditi
is, we
ADd unc
in dest
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have en<
One of I
of the I
heart 01
Coherent
Perceive
Cipher.
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diets hi;

24

fear, vengeance, and the workings of power itself; he
dramatizes the sense of alienation, the failure of institu-
tions to guide conduct and faith; he studies fierce individ-
uality, the innate desire for freedom and survival, and

the almost magical ability to metamorphize for self-preser-
vation. Self is the focus here, and that absorption with
self issues clearly from the incidents related to Kosinski's
nonfiction [Lipani, pp, cit., pp. 26-27).

Lipani's interpretation is appealing for several reasons. It is
cogent; it lends to Kosinski a moral perspective--even an optimism; and
it fits the biographical information. I think, however, it is less
successful with the fiction and essays because it presupposes that
Kosinski's idea of self is always synonymous with that of the humanistic
tradition. To understand just how deficient Lipani's interpretation
is, we have only to consider that the “freer"--the more unrestricted
and uncontrolled--Kosinski's protagonists become, the more they engage
in destructive (anti-humanistic) behavior.

This brief survey suggests some of the difficulties that critics
have encountered with the moral implications of Kosinski's fiction.

One of my concerns in this study is to clarify, at least, the nature

of the problem. I intend to show that a moral dilemma lies at the
heart of Kosinski's work: On the one hand contemporary man desires a
coherent sensible world and self-realization. On the other hand, he
perceives a world which is fragmented and absurd in which he is a
cipher. One response to the frustration which arises from this situa-
tion is the choice of the perverse--the turning aside of the normal
creative instincts into the destructive and anti-creative which contra-

dicts his original desire. The dilemma, then, is not only moral and

historical, it is intensely emotional, for it results in a responseffi)

25

passionate that it borders on the pathological. The anatomy of this
kind of choice--the choice of the perverse--is the subject of The

Painted Bird.

 

Chapter 1 The Painted Bird

 

For most readers and reviewers the Boy of The Painted Bird is a

 

sympathetic hero. For one thing he is young, and Kosinski represents
him as an "innocent" narrator at least initially. For another, his
innocence stands in contrast to the brutality of the peasants of the
region. So, the reader might easily condemn the peasants, the Nazis,
indeed all of the adults who, by inference, contribute to the Boy's
degradation. For the same reasons the book is often taken for an
apology for the Boy and an indictment of the others; or it is taken
as an essentially anti-war novel. Therefore it might surprise many
readers and critics when Kosinski, in his own essay on the novel,
asserts that the Boy is a "negative hero":

It seems, therefore, that all the adults in this book are

positive heroes, because they did not kill the boy. . . .(they)

contributed to the survival of the Boy during the war, when he

was among strangers whom death threatened for sheltering or

aiding him in any way. . . .So much about positive heroism.

This book has, however, also a negative hero.

He is the Boy.

Of all the characters he alone hates consciously, continu-

ously, and most deeply; he desires and thirsts to hate others

for all that had happened to him in this world [Notes, VII,

P“ 99].
The truth of this is apparent when we take a hard look at what the boy
has become when he emerges at the end of the novel. He is filled with

hate; he has adopted a peculiar morality of vengeance in which the

object of revenge is impersonal; he engages in vicious and destructive

26

27

acts. Therefore, Kosinski's definition of the perverse, which he

later applied to the protagonist of Ste 3, applies equally to the Boy

of The Painted Bird.

 

The original sense of 'creative' becomes completely reversed;

now the only possible creative act, the independent act of

choice and self-enhancement, seems to be the destructive

act--as in Sade [Art, p. 54].
Nor is the Boy's choice of the perverse as a mode of life a temporary
phenomenon, restricted only to a critical period of his experience.

Despite the apparently "positive" conclusion of the novel, a matter

I will discuss later, Kosinski himself describes the Boy's future

this way:

For this world he feels only boundless contempt and hate;

and the shadow of this contempt will lengthen as the Boy

grows. . . .[Npppp, VII, p. 101].
This observation might furnish a prelude to Spppp, Kosinski's next
novel, where, in fact, the adult narrator acts out the perversity
which the Boy has chosen.

The Painted Bird, then, shows how of a perverse (a "negative")
hero evolves. "Evolves" applies in this case because the Boy's experi-
ence, especially his resppnses to that experience, show a progression
along definite lines. As we will see, he first adOpts the outlook
and morality of primitivism, then Christianity, then Anti-Christianity,
or Satanism, then Marxism (political scientific materialism), and
finally the perverse, a form of nihilism. Thus, the Boy's experience
corresponds to the historical experience of Western man; his situation

to that of contemporary man; and his moral outlook (the perverse) to

28

a prominent strain of contemporary thought. So The Painted Bird, is

 

inn allegory. Because the evolution of the Boy is so central to its
‘meaning, we will look at that first and in some detail.
The Boy is cast into an alien world by a series of accidents, a

themerwhich Kosinski repeats at the beginning of Beinnghere. Because

 

of his dark complexion and urban accent--almost unintelligible to

the peasants of the area--they suspect that he is either a Jew or a
Gypsy and therefore a menace to them in one of two ways; first as

an evil agent; the peasants, traditionally superstitious, retain a
belief in witchcraft and magic; second,as a political danger: the
Nazis who control the area exact stiff penalties for harboring Jews or
Gypsies.

Predictably the Boy's first protectors are the local "witches",
male or female, on whom the essentially pagan peasants depend as
mediators between the supernatural world and themselves. The Boy is
not a threat to these marginal people because they regard him as a
controllable force, valuable as a talisman, or simply as useful
assistant. From these witch-priests the Boy learns a kind of primi-
tivism. Such a view insists on the interconnectedness of all things,
both physical and spiritual; magic and ritual are means used to mani-
pulate reality; the world is conceived as divided between the forces
of light and dark, good and evil. Because the various deities,
spirits, and demons are identified with physical phenomenon (sun, rain,
fire, disease, etc.) the primitive generally assumes that evil (the
forces of dark) are superior in strength to those of light. Because
good and evil are conceived as physical things, this sort of view has

a kind of superiority over more abstract moral systems in that good

29

and evil are more immediate and have concrete manifestations. For
the Boy, this View of the world is the first point in his moral
transformation.

Of those who harbor the Boy, the witches are the kindest and he
has a kind of security with them. The ordinary peasants and farmers
are the most brutal, no doubt because they are the most likely to
see him as a threat. Eventually the Boy accepts their image of him
as an evil and inferior being, so that by the time he is confronted
by the SS officer he feels "like a squashed caterpiller oozing in
the dust", and concludes,"l had nothing against his killing me"[§§, p. 129].

A local priest rescues him from the SS and gives him over to
a farmer who turns out to be the most brutal of any of his masters.

But through the influence of the priest, the Boy conceives a passion
for religion. He becomes a fervent acolyte:
And even though my prayers had not produced perceptible

results, they must have been noticed in heaven, where justice

is the law [P§, p. 154].
A Christian View of the world replaces his primitivism, but it is more
accurate to say that Christianity displaces primitivism because
primitivism remains in the Boy's background, just as in the historical
case when Roman, Greek and Teutonic paganism remained after the
Christian conversions of the first millenium. In the Christian world-view,
the destiny of men and nations is not determined by the dialectic of
two equally powerful forces. The forces of light are the more powerful
and there is a final moral dimension (heaven) where justice will
prevail. Apparently, however, the Boy's prayers have not been noticed

in heaven. During the service on the feast day of Corpus Christi, he

30

is compelled to carry a missal that is too heavy for him. He drops it.
The enraged peasants throw him in a dung pit and leave him to drown.
When he crawls out, he discovers he has lost the ability to speak. As
he wanders away from the village into the forest, he searches for an

explanation for his calamity.

There must have been some cause for the loss of my speech.
Some greater force, with which I had not yet managed to
communicate, commanded by destiny . . . .God had no reason
to inflict such terrible punishment on me. I had probably
incurred the wrath of some other forces, which spread their
tentacles over those God abandoned for some reason or other.
[_P_§_I p. 161].

This explanation, involving a "greater force", as well as the idea that
God "abandons" certain people for an undefined reason, is, in part, a
regression to primitivism.

His next adventure furnishes him a name for his unknown force. In
another village he is taken in by a family who the other villagers shun
for an unnamed reason. Though he has not quite reached puberty, the
daughter, Ewka, initiates him into sex. And with her he finds his only
happy moments in the period of the narrative. Then one night he hears
peculiar noises from the father's hut. Looking in he sees father,
daughter, and brother engaged in a sexual act with a goat.

Something collapsed inside me. My thoughts fell apart and
shattered into broken fragments like a smashed jug. . . .
All these events became suddenly clear and obvious. They
explained the expression I had often heard people use about
people who were very successful in life: 'He is in league

with the Devil.'. . . .Only those with a sufficiently power-
ful passion for hatred, greed, revenge, or torture to obtain
some objective seemed to make a good bargain with the powers
of Evil. Others, confused, uncertain of their aim, lost
between curses and prayers, the tavern and the church,
struggled through life alone, without help from either God
or the Devil.

31

So far I had been one of those. I felt annoyed with myself

for not having understood sooner the real rules of this

world Igg, pp. 172-173].
Since his devotion to the powers of good--God and the church--have
proven ineffective, he decides to commit himself to the power of evil.
One premise of primitivism--that evil is stronger than good--has its
influence in this decision. This too has an historical parallel--
Satanism is the Christian transformation of pagan or pantheistic
religions.

The time of passivity was over; the belief in good, the

power of prayer, altars, priests, and God had deprived me

of my speech. My love for Ewka, my desire to do anything

I could for her, also met with its proper reward.

Now I would join those who were helped by the Evil Ones.

[pp, p. 175].

The Boy's decision to join the Evil Ones is the crucial point of
the novel, the beginning of a morality of hate and revenge, his deter-
mination to exist on the fringes of the community rather than within it.
He chooses the perverse. This is not, however, a merely pragmatic
decision, a choice between two moralities on the basis of one's
superiority to another. His experience has left the Boy with a profound
hatred. His adoption of the morality of evil provides an ideological
base from which he can act out his feelings.

Following the Boy's initial choice, he has the opportunity to
choose again--on one hand the possibility of joining the community;
through the vehicle of socialism, on the other a morality of personal
vengeance. Towards the end of the summer, he is living near another

village. With the advance of Russian armies from east to west,

32

the war is nearing the area. He witnesses a Kalmuk raid on the village.
Structurally, this episode resembles the last act of a melodrama: the
raid is an extravaganza of brutality; the Russian army, like the cavalry,
appears, captures and hangs the Kalmuks; the Boy who has been wounded
by the Kalmuks, faints, then wakes in a Russian army hospital. None-
theless, it is a powerful episode, having the feel of Medieval concep-
tions of Apocalypse--even to the horsemen who mow down the villagers
with swords and axes. The final scene suggests insurpassable violence
which is appropriate because this is the climax of the Boy's experience
as a wanderer among the peasants.
He becomes a charge of the Russian soldiers. He is cared for

by two men in particular--Gavrilla, a political officer, and Mitka,
"a sharp-shooting instructor and a crack sniper." Gavrilla teaches
him to read and introduces him to communist thought:

From him I learned that the order of the world had nothing

to do with God, and that God had nothing to do with the

world. The reason for this was quite simple. God did not

exist. The cunning priests had invented Him so they could

trick stupid superstitious people. There was no God, no

Holy Trinity, no devils, ghosts, or ghouls rising from

graves; there was no Death flying everywhere in search of

new sinners to snare. These were all tales for ignorant

people who did not understand the natural order of the

world, did not believe in their own powers, and therefore

had to take refuge in their belief in some God [g§, pp.

212-213].

The Boy regrets the time he spent praying and he reflects on the

difficulties facing those who depend on their belief in God. Gavrilla
teaches him about the great leaders (Stalin and Lenin), those who

"because of (their) superior knowledge and wisdom" became the leaders

of the people, those at the "summit of society" who saw the larger

33

pattern. Thus, Christianity which had displaced primitivism is now
displaced by Marxism. But Marxism, despite its atheistic premise,

has a feeling of divine proportions as the Boy observes:

Some of the soldiers were more impressed by Lenin, others
by Stalin, just as some of the peasants spoke more often
about God the Father and others about God the son [P§, p. 215].

Marxism offers the Boy a last opportunity of believing that sur-

vival as a member of the community is possible:

Eventually Gavrilla's lessons filled me with a new confidence.
In this world there were realistic ways of promoting goodness,
and there were people who had dedicated their whole lives to
it. These were the Communist Party members [$3, p. 217] .

But the Boy's confidence gives way to apprehension as he learns more

about the life of the individual in the collective;

I felt lost in this maze. In the world into which Gavrilla
was initiating me, human aspirations and expectations were
entangled with each other like the roots and branches of
great trees in a thick forest, each tree struggling for more
moisture from the soil and more sunshine from the sky. [P§,
p. 221].

I tried to memorize Gavrilla's teaching, not to lose a single
word. He maintained that to be happy and useful one should
join the march of the working people, keeping in step with
the others in the place assigned in the column. Pushing too
close to the head of the column was as bad as lagging behind.
It could mean loss of contact with the masses, and would lead
to decadence and degeneracy. Every stumble could slow down
the whole column, and those who fell risked being trampled

on by the others. . .[§§, p. 222].

The Boy is uncertain of the alternative that Gavrilla offers. At this
point Mitka offers another alternative in the form of a lesson, and

it is this alternative that most influences him. One evening several

friends of Mitka slip out of camp to a village near the camp. At a

34

feast, they are murdered by jealous drunken peasants.

Vanka lay on his back, his white face turned to the surround-
ing onlookers. In the dim light of a lantern one could see
streaks of congealed blood on his chest. Lonka's face had
been split in two by a terrible blow from an ax [P§, pp.

229-230].
No official retribution is planned; the troops are once again ordered
to avoid contact with the local people. But Mitka takes his own
revenge. He wakes the Boy before dawn, takes a rifle with a tele-
scopic sight, tripod and field glasses, and leads him through the
forest to the fields which border the village. He selects a tall oak.
There from his sniper's perch he kills four people. Mitka, truly
Russian in his contradiction, will not permit a child to witness
the killings through the binoculars, although he means his action to
be exemplary. So the Boy, who is telling the story in the first
person must imagine what is happening. Thus the method of narration
assumes a particularly ingenious quality.

I closed my eyes and saw the village again, with the three

bodies sliding to the ground. The remaining peasants,

unable to hear the shots at that distance, scattered in

panic, looking around in bewilderment and wondering where
the shots were coming from [E§, p. 234].

This lesson and its implications are not lost on the Boy:

How I envied Mitka!. . .Man carried in himself his own
private war, which he has to wage, win, or lose, himself--
his own justice, which is his alone to administer. . . .If
he could not revenge his friends, what was the use of all
those days of training in the sniper's art, the mastery of
eye, hand, and breath?

There was another element in Mitka's revenge. A man, no
matter how popular and admired, lives mainly with himself.

35

If he is not at peace with himself, if he is harassed by

something he did not do but should have done to preserve

his own image of himself, he is like the 'unhappy Demon,

spirit of exile, gliding high above the sinful world. . .'

[22, p. 235].
From the Boy's point of view, Mitka's example provides an alternative
to Gavrilla's ideal of the collective and the slow march to the summit
with the army of the working class:

. . .one could also reach the summit alone, with the help

at most of a single friend, the way Mitka and I had climbed

the tree [P§, p. 236].
It is this alternative which the Boy embraces and which becomes the
basis for his creed of survival and revenge in his subsequent life.
This creed is clearly a transformation of his earlier commitment to
the powers of evil, and the psychological basis of the commitment
remains the same, and is suggested by the passage above;

Something he (a man) should have done but did not do pp_
pgeserve his own image p£_himself (italics mine, M.B.)

 

In her classic study Ego ppd the Mechanisms pf Defense, Anna

 

Freud discusses a set of dynamics that could describe the Boy:1

A child introjects some characteristic of an anxiety-object
and so assimilates an anxiety-experience which he has just
undergone. Here, the mechanism of identification or intro-
jection is combined with a second important mechanism. By
impersonating the aggressor, assuming his attributes or ——'
imitating his aggression, the child transforms himself—from
Epp_pp£spp_threatened into the person who makes the threat.

 

 

 

 

1Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms p§_Defense, tr. from

the German by Cecil Baines, New York: International Universities
Press, Inc., 1946. [See especially Chapter IX, "Identification
with the Aggressor"]

 

36

In Bgyond the Pleasure Principle the significance of this

change from the passive to the active role as a means of

assimilating unpleasant or traumatic experiences in infancy

is discussed in detail. (Italics mine, M.B., pg. 121-122).
The use of this particular mechanism, Anna Freud argues, is an inter-
mediate step in the development of the super-ego; as such it is a
"normal" stage in the development of personality. It is "normal"
especially when the child is threatened by external aggression.

So when the Boy internalizes the aggression which is implicit
in the philosophy of revenge, he is responding in a reasonable and
predictable fashion. He defends himself; he preserves his ego.
However, his later development, when the original sources of aggression
are gone, shows a pathology, because his aggression at that time is

generalized. If we assume for a moment that the protagonist of Steps

is a mature version of the Boy of The Painted Bird a further comment

 

of A. Freud is strikingly appropriate:

The particular combination of introjection and projection

to which we have applied the term 'identification with
aggressor' can be regarded as normal only so long as the ego
employs it in his conflict with authority, i.e., in its
efforts to deal with anxiety-objects. It is a defensive
process which ceases to be innocuous and becomes pathological
when it is carried over into the love-life [pp, plp,, p. 129].

The philosophy of revenge reveals a pathology because it is generalized,
no longer appr0priate for the immediate situation of the Boy (as adult

in Steps) or at the end of The Painted Bird. As a result the creed of

 

revenge enables the Boy to preserve himself, but at the price of
sacrificing those values that would enable him to rejoin the community.
Not only does the outward expression of hatred preserve the self

at the critical moment, it arms the indiviudal with new and effective

37

weapons to deal with a destructive society in the future:

. . .to possess hate is to possess great power, and the
wielder of that power has control of magnificent gifts.

Like Prospero he rules his kingdom, and justice is meted

out according to his will. Things are as he sees them to
be; if not, they soon submit to his vision of the world.

He can shape his world as he wills: Prospero's wand becomes
revenge [Notes, VII, p. 100].

The Boy's evolution is nearly complete. He is about to reenter
the world fully armed with teeth and nails. And in the concluding
episodes when.he is re-united with his parents we see him in action.
Yet the very last episode, in which he regains his voice, suggests a
re-unification with the community, possibly a full return. Because
a return seems inconsistent with the direction he has taken, we should
take a careful look at that episode.

One night during a police raid he is arrested with his criminal
companions. Shortly after, his parents move from the city. That
winter they send him to live with an old ski instructor in a mountain
shelter. The old man leads a simple life; he is calm, patient and
religious. In the beginning, the Boy assumes a condescending attitude
towards him:

The instructor kneeled down for prayer while I looked on
indulgently. Here was a grown man, educated in the city,

who acted like a simple peasant and could not accept the idea
that he was alone in the world and could expect no assistance
from anyone. Everyone of us stood alone and the sooner a

man realized that all Gavrillas, Mitkas, and Silent Ones were
expendable, the better for him. It mattered little if one
was mute; people did not understand one another anyway [P§,
pp. 267-268].

Nonetheless, the instructor evokes the Boy's respect, and he assumes

the role of novitiate, as he has done throughout the novel.

38

I tried to obey him and was glad when I earned his scant
praise.

In a sudden blizzard, the Boy has an accident. Waking in a
hospital room he hears the phone ringing, lifts it to his ear and
hears a man's voice:

. . .somewhere at the other end of the wire there was someone
who wanted to talk with me. . . .I felt an overpowering
desire to speak. I opened my mouth and strained. Sounds
crawled up my throat [P2, p. 269].

The few sounds become an outpour, a recitation of his life as a
wanderer. He regains the voice he lost when he was cast into the
dung pit.

The archetypal pattern--the elderly ski instructor as master or
priest, the Boy as novitiate, the ascetic setting--suggests learning,
healing, reconstruction, or perhaps the Boy's initiation into a higher
truth. The process of healing is realized in the re-capture of speech.
The response to the man's voice on the telephone suggests a return to the
community. If we take this episode at face value, then, the Boy emerges
as more of a "positive" hero, and the episode indicates a final point in
his moral evolution.

But typically the reader finds this ending unconvincing, and for
several good reasons, all of which can be summed up as convenience at
the expense of consistency.

The ending is convenient formalistically because it provides a
closure to the action, an end which is consistent with the beginning
and middle; thus: (1) the Boy is separated from his parents, (2) the

Boy is separated from the community and loses his voice; and (3) the

39

Boy regains his voice and rejoins the community. This fits with the
actual dramatic tension of the book which lies between alienation and
community.

This kind of ending is also convenient because it is positive.
It has the feel, if not the conviction, of moral enlightenment. Pre-
sumably the Boy has made some sort of spiritual leap which enables him
to reconcile the normal desires to trust other human beings and share
with them with the profound fear and distrust of others which he has
acquired through his experience. But the reader's sense of the realities
of emotional life rejects this possiblity.

In his essay, Kosinski himself says this about the Boy's future:

For this world he feels only boundless contempt and hate;

and the shadow of this contempt will lengthen as the Boy
grows. . .

The Boy. . .embodies the drama of our culture: the tragedy
of the crime always remains with the living. This drama
cannot be killed on the fronts, bombed in cities, confined

in concentration camps. This drama is borne by all the
survivors of the crime, both the conquerors and the conquered.
Its essence is hate [Notes, VII, p. 101].

But when Kosinski discusses the Boy's future in epilogue to the
earlier editions, he does not mention hate or contempt. There he
emphasizes what seems to be positive qualities--the Boy's sense of
independence and self-sufficiency fostered by his experience.

During the war years his powers of self-dependence had
increased enormously, and the maintenance of personal
freedom had been the goal to which he had given all his
intelligence and energy [g§, p. 271].

The contrast in emphasis in these two passages is another indica-

tion of the moral dilemma underlying Kosinski's work: on the one hand,

40

a desire for self-realization; on the other, the desire for revenge
which leads to the perverse.
For now we can say that the final episode implies, at best, the

Boy's return to the community in a marginal position. This comment,
which Kosinski makes in the essay, probably best describes the Boy as
he emerges from the novel:

And so the Boy survives the war, filled with the terrible

poison of hatred which gives him a goal to live for and

therefore helps him to endure [Eppp§, p. 101].

ii

The tragedy of The Painted Bird, then, is that the victim adopts

 

the morality of his persecutor. "From a defenseless victim in the
hands of pursuers he becomes a living symbol of those who had previously
pursued him." [Notes, VII, p. 101.] This is the final irony of the
Boy's decision to join the "Evil Ones" and to adopt the creed of Mitka
the Sharpshooter. He adopts precisely the creed of the peasants who
have brutalized him (even Mitka is most likely a Russian peasant)
just as the peasants have adopted the creed of those who have oppressed
them:

Their actions had been governed by the traditions and

beliefs of generations of forebears, whose fear of strangers--

all too often invading armies--was indeed justified. . . .

He came to accept that the peasants were hardly more cruel

than any others of their kind and condition. Environment

had quite naturally dominated behavior [3B, Epilogue, p. 270].

Compare Kosinski's theme to that of Aeschylus' Oresteia where,

for the first time, the legitimacy of blood retribution was questioned.

Aeschylus found the answer to the problem of perpetual bloodshed in the

41

universal laws of the state and its legal organs. But in the age
in which Kosinski writes,the state itself and its laws are often the

wrongdoersanuitherefore there is no appeal to justice.

Could these peasants suddenly forget what the ubiquitous
Bekanntmachungen (notices) perpetually reminded them

about: that the penalty was death for giving shelter

or aid to any Jew or Gypsy under ppy_pircumstances what-
soever. This law was not conceived in the remote poverty-
stricken villages of Eastern EurOpe. . . it came to them
expressly from that 'civilized' world. . . .Its writing and
promulgation were undertaken by men educated in the centers
of European culture, brought up with knowledge of the
Renaissance and Enlightenment, of the philosophy of Kant,
Hegel and Schopenhauler, loving the music of Bach, Beethoven
and Mozart, the poetry of Goethe and Schiller, and aware

of the prose of the finest minds of their generation [Notes,
VI, p. 96].

 

On the basis of similar arguments, many modern writers, especially
those of revolutionary purpose,will justify, on two counts, violence
and other acts whidh would normally be thought of as criminal: that
they are the only effective means of initiating social and political
change; and that they preserve and enhance the self, the theme which
seems to underlie the Boy's creed.. From the viewpoint of the revolu-
tionary, violence is a necessary means since the state will use violence
to preserve the status quo. While this argument seems undeniable, the
problem for the revolutionary--who is almost always of humanistic
persuasion--is to justify the use of nonhumanistic means; usually

then, the revolutionary intends to limit violence to the transitional
(the revolutionary) period, or he attributes different moral meanings
to violence, depending on its object; thus, the violence of revolution-
aries is different, in kind, from that of the state or oppressor.

Marcuse, for example:

42

In my lecture I have emphasized that there are many different
kinds of violence employed in defense and in aggression. . . .
The violence of revolutionary terror, for example, is very
different from that of the White terror, because revolutionary
terror implies its own abolition in the process of creating a
free society, which is not the case for the White terror.2

Here again we encounter a moral dilemma which resembles that of
the Kosinski protagonist; a desire for humanistic freedom on one hand,
an impulse for terror and destruction on the other. With this exception--
here it is fully rationalized; destruction leads to humanism. This is
exactly the kind of philosophy Camus condemns in The Rebel, on the
grounds that it is a moral and logical contradiction.

The philosophy of violent revolution, nihilism, and the idea of
the perverse are related in the moral dilemma they pose and in their
historical roots--the final collapse of religious faith in the 19th
century and with it the collapse of a belief in a coherent universe
ruled over by a divine intelligence. While this view and its implica-
tions are hardly limited to any one school of thought, the atheistic
existentialists express it in the clearest terms:

The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing
that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding
values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there
can no longer be an p_priori God, since there is no infinite
and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written
that the God exists, that we must be honest, that we must

not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are
only men. Dostoevsky said, 'If God didn't exist, everything
would be possible.‘ That is the very starting point of exis-
tentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not

exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within
him nor without does he find anything to cling to.3

2Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures, tr. Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shirley
M. weber, Boston Beacon Press (1970).

 

3Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions. New York:
Philosophical Society (1957).

43

This is the starting point of both existentialism and nihilism.
Nihilism which began as an affirmation of dignity and freedom decayed
into violence and terror, possibly because it did not, in Camu§*words,
recognize responsible limits. For Camus and Sartre the solution to the
crisis produced by the collapse of faith is man's assumption of the
responsibility for his own destiny. He sets his own limits and creates
himself.

In choosing the perverse, the Boy chooses nihilism. It is not,
however, a peculiar individual response. It is a prominent modern

response to the modern crisis.

iii
In a world of crumbling belief, man experiences alienation. That
and the moral problems of choice it implies are expressed symbolically
by the major structural events of the novel. There are three of these.

The Boy is thrust by circumstances into an alien world. As Sartre

 

says,

we are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try
to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Con-
demned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other
respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is
responsible for everything he does.4

Kosinski repeats this theme in Being There where his protagonist, aptly

 

named ”Chance", is expelled from his "garden", not because of sin, pride,
or disobedience, as in the case of Adam in the original garden, but

through accident. In general, the modern fictional convention of man's

4Ibid.

44

finding himself in the context of life by accident manifests the con-
viction of our age that one can no longer believe in a larger order,
which guarantees each man, or Man, his purpose.

The Boy loses his voice. As a manifestation of inner paralysis,
this is also, in kind, a familiar convention of our fiction. One thinks,
for example, of the protagonist of Gunter Grass' Tlp_25pp who, at
the age of three, makes the rational decision not to talk or grow. Then
there is Melville's Bartleby, a grandfather of modern protagonists,
who reduces speech to the barest uses--to communicate his own negation:
“I would prefer not to." And Lucky in Waiting fpp gpppp, whose problem
is the Obverse-dxx3much talk, dissociated and fragmented as his world--
which, in the end, is the same as no talk at all. /In addition to
signifiying paralysis, the breakdown in speech has the actual effect
of intensifying the alienation of the individual from the community:
the Boy is compelled into the position of bystander and observer,‘
also a familiar situation for the contemporary hero: I

Observation is a silent process; without the means of
participation, the silent one must observe. Perhaps
this silence is also a metaphor for dissociation from
the community and from something greater [Npppp, III, p. 92].
This "something greater" is undoubtedly alienation from self, and ulti-
mately from Being.

But while silence enforces isolation from others and from the
community, it also compels action:

ereas speech may be a substitute for action, or an

oblique method of suggesting it, action speaks for itself.
[Notes, III, p. 91].W
“““ z

45

Because the Boy cannot express himself in speech, he must express
himself in acts; moreover, the threats of his immediate situation demand
action. Yet there is no dependable external guide to action. He is
caught in the dilemma described by Sartre:

Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to

be responsible. I am abandoned in the world, not in the

sense that I might remain abandoned and passive in a hostile

universe, like a board floating on the water, but rather in

the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help,
engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility

for an instant.5

The B y regains his speech. As a fictional convention, the
recapture of speech should mean a return to the community. But the
Boy's return is superficial. He chooses to remain a marginal figure--a
kind of spiritual outlaw. By this choice and by adopting the creed
of impersonal revenge, he attempts to reverse the roles, to make others
the victim. But to become the pursuer rather than the pursued, he must
sever his bonds from the community, he must dehumanize himself by
eradicating compassion and empathy. He commits, against himself,
precisely that crime which made him a victim in the first place--he

makes himself into an object. He remains a victim.

In a culture where belief and institutions have crumbled--Kosinski
suggests in his essay on §pppp--the choice of the perverse seems to
be ”. . .the only possible creative act, the independent act of choice
and self-enhancement. . ." This is the choice the Boy makes, and it
is the choice which all of Kosinski's protagonists make, or are forced

to make.

5Ibid.

46

The Painted Bird shows the evolution that leads to that choice.

 

The Boy rejects the ideologies and institutions that fail him, together
with the social orders they represent. He responds to those who
brutalize him with a growing hatred. The one ideology he clings to

is the one which will never fail him because it is the perfect expression
of hatred which is enduring. His condition at the end of the novel is
pathological. That pathology, acted out in an adult world, furnishes

the material in Steps.

Chapter 2 Steps

§ppp§, Jerzy Kosinski's second novel, published in the fall of 1968,
was received with widespread critical acclaim, and in the spring of 1969
won the National Book Award. In design, the book consists of some fifty
short episodes narrated by an unnamed man. The construction of the
individual episodes is classical--each has a clearly outlined plot and
each is self-enclosed. While the episodes do fall into general thematic
groups and while there is a general sense of movement--from Eastern
Europe to the United States, for example--there is no overall plot
in the traditional sense--that is, a framework of action into which the
individual episodes might fit. Interspersed among the episodes are
fragmentary conversations in dramatic form, presumably between the
narrator and his mistress. The subjects of the individual episodes
comprise a catalog of the grotesque: sexual perversion, murder, disease,
violence and crime. Typically the narrator is the principle "actor" in
these small tales which he reports in a narrative characterized by a
pervasive sense of detachment.

At the time of publication, the reviewers remarked the novel's
unusual form and nearly all acclaimed it as innovative, but few attempted
more specific criticism. The reviewers also praised Kosinski's style

which had become even more lucid and controlled since The Painted Bird.

 

But the moral implications of the material as well as the implicit
amorality of the author-narrator's posture troubled many reviewers.

Writing in the New Leader, Geoffrey Wblff suggested that Kosinski had

 

47

48

not fulfilled an implicit responsibility to present a balanced view of
life: "The novel leaves no orifice unexploited. It goes beyond guilt,
ignores love. One must question its morality."l
Altogether the novel seemed puzzling. It was innovative. It

addressed itself to issues that had profound moral implications. Yet,
despite the transparency of style and the sense of simplicity, the novel
did not offer readers any readily apparent moral or aesthetic framework
with which they could approach it. So, while everyone recognized the
power of the novel, only a very few ventured any definitive evaluations
and these were either too flattering or too harsh, and usually for the
wrong reasons. Irving Howe's response probably best expresses what
most reviewers felt. Certainly it represents what most readers say:

It is a work highly problematic in aesthetic strategy and moral

implications, and even after two careful readings I do not pre-

tend to grasp it fully. All I hope is that I will not gloss

over my puzzlement by means of an overheated "literary” rhetoric,

such as overwhelmed or intimidated reviewers often employ to
mask their difficulties.2

As in the case of The Painted Bird, Kosinski wrote a critical

 

essay on Steps--The Art p§_the Self, Essay§_p_Propps Steps. This also

 

 

 

is a difficult piece. But it offers substantial insights into Kosinski's
thinking. Here he develops what I believe are the two ideas most relevant
to all his fiction, the "perverse" and "transference."

While Kosinski discusses "transference" frequently in "The Art of

the Self” he never offers a definitive explanation of the term. We will

1Geoffrey Wblff, "Growing Poisonous Flowers," New Leader, October
7, 1968, PP. 18-19.

 

2Irving Howe, "From the Other Side of the Moon," Harper's,March,
1969, PP. 102-105.

49

get a clearer idea of what transference means by examining the essay in
some detail. At the same time we will see that Kosinski takes a strangely
ambivalent position in his judgement of its moral implications.

Kosinski first mentions transference as he begins a discussion of
the episode in which the narrator installs a listening device in a
woman's apartment, seduces her, then, when he becomes bored with her,

considers introducing her to drugs:

From the viewpoint of the protagonist of Steps, the only truly
satisfying relationship, then, is one of growing domination,
one in which his experience--a certain form of the past--can
be projected onto the other person.

When the narrator has become so intimately involved with this
woman that he has succeeded in unburdening himself and grafting
his past onto her, when the relationship no longer has any
valid function, then he no longer needs her, since the forms of

his past and his effort to discard them were the basis of his
need.

Not only is the woman no longer needed, she is also no longer

wanted. She is now his past, and that he has discarded. Since

his past has transferred to another being, he assumes that its

cancerous action will continue in the other person. It was a

necessary act because his past was crippling him, preventing

him from acting fully in the present.3
After reading these passages we want to know two things: What are the
"forms of the past"? By what mechanism are they "transferred"?

First, let us consider Kosinski's attitude towards "transference"

without knowing exactly what transference is. From the phrase "it was a

necessary act", we might infer that Kosinski is asserting the truth of the

preceding 1ines--that the narrator's past was in fact preventing him

3Jerzy Kosinski, "The Art of the Self: Essays a Propos Steps,"
Exile, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Toronto, York University). For convenience all
future references to the essay will be indicated in the text by title
and page number.

50

from "acting fully in the present", and that, therefore, Kosinski places

a positive value on the protagonist's action. But Kosinski goes on to

add:

The narrator's projections serve also an opposite function

that of a mutual shield thrust out to prevent the admission

of the present and to perpetuate and intensify shared memories.

The hostility discernible in his relationships indicates an

occasional recognition of the deception, of the fact that they

serve solely as the defense against spontaneity of the present

moment. [Art, pg. 53].
This seems a clear statement of Kosinski's own attitude, and therefore,
we must assume that the earlier statement is supposed to represent the
narrator's own rationale, a deception either for himself or the other,
in this case,the woman of the episode which Kosinski is discussing.
Notice, however, the ambiguity of Kosinski's discussion in these
passages, indicating, perhaps, his inability, or unwillingness to
separate himself as author from the protagonist or his indecision on
the moral issues involved.

His comment that the narrator's "projections" are "a defense
against the spontaneity of the present moment" is consistent with
another reference to the subject of transference which Kosinski makes
during a discussion of suicide. Referring to Camus' play Caligpla,
Kosinski writes,

Man dies becausetfluahuman condition both wills it and allows
it. The definitive act of defiance and of superiority over

the human condition is to defeat Nature with her own weapon,

is to bring about death at will (truly one's last will).
[Art, pg. 54].

51

At this point in his exposition, Kosinski is not yet speaking of the
protagonist of Steps, and one assumes that he is stating his own atti-

tudes towards suicide. But, as he continues, he attributes the same

attitude to the protagonist.

For the protagonist of Steps, suicide is an act of the present.

In performing it a man chooses to escape from his future and

from his past, thus overcoming the knowledge that he will die.

By suicide, he takes over a natural function. To die in nature's

time is to accede to a denial of man's dignity: to die in

one's own time is to affirm that dignity. Man has the power

to choose--it is his comfort in the face of the predictable.

In committing suicide, the man makes himself historical (that

is, people can and must preface their statements about him

with "he was"). He is transferring the burden of his past onto

the shoulders of the world, onto history. [Art, P9. 54]
Notice first the parallel between "the man (. . .) transferring the
burden of his past onto the shoulders of the world" and the passage we
discussed earlier in which Kosinski asserts that the narrator is trans-
ferring forms of his past onto the woman of the apartment episode. So
we see that the same dynamics are involved although we do not yet know
what they are. The above passage offers another difficulty: When
Kosinski says, "For the protagonist of Steps suicide is an act of the
present." is he speaking about the literal suicide? And whose? A
minor character's? The narrator's? There are only two suicides in the
novel: a girl at the university and an unrelated male student. And

the narrator has little to say about the fact of their suicides in

an evaluative sense. There is no evidence for the narrator's suicide.

It would make more sense to assume that Kosinski is speaking metaphorically

52

about the protagonists desire to "kill" the spontaneity of the present
moment. This interpretation would answer the question of why Kosinski
mentions suicide in connection with the narrator of §pppp, However it
raises still another question related to Kosinski's evaluation of the
act.

As we have seen, Kosinski began his discussion of suicide with a
statement that appears to be an expression of his own views; then he
switches to the protagonist of Spppp, making no distinction between his
views and those of his protagonist; finally, he uses the general term
"the man." Apparently, Kosinski intends us to understand that the view
of suicide which is expressed here is his view, that of his protagonist,
and the general condition (as an ethical possibility) of all men. Now
let us for a moment assume that this is so and that the kind of trans-
ference accomplished by suicide is equivalent to the kind accomplished in
the narrator's relationship to the woman in the apartment episode.

we recall that Kosinski, in discussing that episode, speaks in
negative terms about the narrator's actions:

The hostility discernible in his relationships indicates an
occasional recognition of the deception, of the fact that
they (projections or transferences) serve solely as a defense
against spontaneity of the present.moment. [552, pg. 53].
And earlier in the same discussion, Kosinski, in describing the process
of "transference" from narrator to woman, states that,
The issue of solipsism is always at the center of such dark

art--and the game of expropriation is always momentary and
hence illusory. [Art, pg. 53]

53

The tone of both of these above comments, in regard to the narrator's
transference to the woman, are clearly negative. Should we apply the
same judgement to the other example of transference--that which Kosinski
says occurs in suicide? When Kosinski discusses suicide he takes what
seems to be an affirmative stance, but because of the ambiguities of
his argument we cannot be sure, and therefore we cannot make any firm
judgement.

Our sense of Kosinski's ambiguity towards "transference" is further
heightened by the conclusion of the discussion in question, [Art, pg. 54-
55], a discussion of Sade. Sade, Kosinski argues, reduces people to
their most basic characteristics--those which will serve Sade's own
ends, which will "advance his own intended action." On this basis,
Kosinski calls Sade's vision "theatrical," meaning "ritualistic."

. . .the other person is the stage onto which Sade projects

a form of his_past. [Italics mine, M.B.l In this way he acts

out the self, obtains a kind of purgation derived from the

scene which does not last beyond the scene's physical duration.

Thus Sade must act again and again--without lasting satisfaction,

without the true recognition of having discarded the forms of

his past. In forcing history to summarize him in a word, he

has obliterated his self, but has marked his survivors with

chosen forms of his past, with his particular shadow [Art, pg.

55].
Aside from his use of the word "projects" which he uses interchangably
with "transfers" throughout the essay, this parallels exactly what
Kosinski says about the narrator in the episode involving the woman in
the apartment. In both cases, the process involves someone (the narrator

or Sade) attempting to rid themselves of the "forms of the past" by

moving it to someone else (the other). And in only one respect does the

54

passage differ from Kosinski's comments about suicide: ". . .without the
pppp recognition of having discarded the forms of his past." [sic.] The
The qualifying use of "true" suggests that there are effective or valid
ways of transferring the past or ineffective or invalid ways. Perhaps
Kosinski means to imply that literal suicide is superior as a means of
discarding the forms of the past to Sade's real or his fictionalized
activities. Again the ambiguity of the argument precludes any firm
decision.

What we are able to say so far is that Kosinski draws an implicit
parallel between the narrator of Steps, the suicide (as Kosinski defines
him), and De Sade. In each case the actor is attempting to relieve him-
self of the burden of his past by transferring to another, a sexual
partner or others, mankind in general, or the more abstract personage of
history. So if we are not yet able to say anything definitive about the
process of transference, we can say something about the motive. In each
of the examples Kosinski discusses, the principle "actor" wants to get
rid of his past. This is consistent with what we have already said
about the narrator's motives in his choice of sadism in relation to
others: his motive in part for sadism is to escape his "facticity",
the conditions by which he comes into existence in a particular world.
The personal past is a major component of that facticity. At this
point, we can also say that inasmuch as Kosinski is ambivalent towards
"transference," he may also be ambivalent towards the motive for
"transference."

At various points in the essay, Kosinski uses the term “transference"
interchangeably with "projection", and this use of terms may give us

further insight into the process Kosinski describes. Both are classic

55

psychoanalytic terms referring to similar processes. Transference refers
to the phenomenon, encountered in psychoanalytic therapy, where the patient
expresses towards the therapist, emotions previously experienced towards a
central person in his life. The analyst, then, becomes a surrogate for a
parent, teacher, husband, wife, or lover. Typically the emotions are
hostile and often they represent emotions experienced in childhood.

Projection is one of the classic defense mechanisms, a defense
mechanism being a pattern of behavior which enables the individual to
defend his ego. In projection (the popular name for which is scapegoating),
the individual ascribes to another party unwanted emotions, feelings, or
attitudes.

Both of these may be involved in what Kosinski means by transference:
The victim, or other, in the relationship may be a surrogate for those
others in the narrator's past. By expressing hostility to the present
other, the narrator avenges himself for old wrongs. (This pattern

explains the Boy's later behavior in The Painted Bird, for example;

 

there is little similar background for the narrator of Spppp; when we meet
him he is already embarked on a career of perversity.) In addition, by
projecting, by ascribing his own feelings and emotions to the present
other, the narrator believes (according to Kosinski in his essay) that
he can rid himself of them.
Kbsinski does employ this kind of psychoanalytic argument at least

once in the essay--in a final discussion of transference in reference
to the Nazi persecutions:

In purging an "unhealthy" mass element, a nation was really

attempting to purge the unhealthy (the unacceptable) in itself.
This selected group served as a screen on which one could

56

project one's own individually crippled past. This was acting

out a sheer transference. [Art, pg. 56]
This is scapegoating in the Classic psychoanalytic sense, and Kosinski
refers to it as a "sheer transference." We should also notice how the
language of his passage describing a political phenomenon parallels
descriptions of the narrator in his relations with others; a similar
situation occurs in Being There where "Chance", that novel's protag-
onist is a "blank page" (the code name assigned to him by Russian
espionage) on whom an entire nation projects their fantasies. Trans-
ference has historical and political dimensions. In the case of Nazi
Germany they were institutionalized by means of the dominant political
ideology.

While this explanation of Nazi persecutions is hardly original,
Kosinski gives it an original twist with a theory of the relation of
memory and emotion:

For the protagonist of Steps memories carry no emotions: they
exist as incidents, as concise dramas. He does not remember
(i.e., experience) his past emotion or pain. He can recall his
response to a specific incident in the past--a movement of the
mind, a physical reaction--but he cannot re-experience the pain
or the emotion proper which produced this response.

For the protagonist of Steps emotions have no memories: they
exist only in the present. When he reads emotion into memory,
he is acting in the present, spontaneously filling the struc-
tures of the drama with feeling (this is similar to what one
does when engrossed in a play or in music). Thus he is re-
visiting the present.

A speculative aside: memories have no emotions, and emotions
have no memories. Perhaps that is why the Nazis were compelled
to create motive memories in order to hold the German people
within the strictures of the past and make spontaneous present

motion impossible. Their purpose was to create a crippled group
past and maintain it in an almost frozen state. [Art, pg. 55]

57

Let us set this out in systematic terms for examination: (1) One

can remember the evegt_1g_the past, but one cannot remember the emotional

 

response to the act; therefore one must assign to the event in the past

 

 

an emotion taken from the present. This would explain Kosinski's

 

insistence throughout the essays that the past is never remembered but

fictionalized. (2) Present emotions are not connected to events in

 

 

the past. This statement presents certain difficulties: The statement

 

only applies to a situation where the present emotion is connected to
an event in the past which cannot be remembered ("emotions have no
memories"). This, however, contradicts the first statement which

implies that only events from the past--as opposed to emotions--can be

 

remembered. In addition, neither statement defines the connection
between present events and present emotions, and one would suspect that
a similar disassociation might apply to the narrator in that respect.

The passage from which we abstract these statements must be taken
as a paradox; on this level the contradiction disappears if we interpret
the passage to mean that for the protagonist a radical disassociation
has occurred between act and feeling (event and emotion). This general
interpretation would also cover the case where there is no connection
between present emotion and present event, a condition that is suggested
by the narrator's alienation.

This interpretation also explains why Kosinski describes the pro-
tagonist's assertion that he must unburden himself of the forms of the

past in order to act freely in the present as a deception [Art, p. 53].

By transferring the past to the "other", the protagonist avoids the
responsibility that would follow as a necessary condition of living in

the world. But without an integration of act and feeling, he cannot act

58

meaningfully in the present, chosen a future, or "act out" or "live"
his past.

The significance of a disassociation of act from feeling is con-
sistent with what we have already said about the narrator's choice of
sadism: The disassociation of act from feeling is another manifestation
of the narrator's attempts to deny his facticity; that is, his existence
in a world of contingencies.

At this point we can attempt a definition of transference. First,
the term describes the dynamics of a relationship of dominance in which
there are two parties, a dominant "actor" (the narrator, Sade, the Nazis
the rational suicide) and a submissive "other" (the woman, the others
in general, mankind, history, a nation).

These dynamics involve both of the classic psychoanalytic meanings
of "transference" and "projection." "Transference" applies in that the
submissive "other" acts as a surrogate for another or others from the
"actor's" past towards whom the "actor" can express hostility or hate for
real or imagined wrongs. "Projection" applies in that the "other"
functions as a screen on whom the "actor" projects memories, desires,
fantasies, attitudes or fears, anything, in short, which is emotionally
unacceptable or burdensome to the "actor." As in the original ritual
of scapegoating, the popular name for projection, the "other" is a
ritual victim who accepts on his head the "sins" of the "actor."

Not only does ritual structure the situation in which transference
occurs, it also corresponds to the nature of the material being trans-
ferred--in this case, the §p£m§_p§_ppp_pp§p, an expression which

Kosinski uses rather than "the past". The use of the qualifier "forms"

59

suggests that Kosinski understands the past in terms of structures,

 

perhaps repeated or recurring experiences.

 

At least part of the method of transference is ritualistic, or
theatrical, in that it involves acting-out with pre-conceived roles. For
example, in his relationship with the woman of the conversational inter-
ludes, the narrator is possibly re-enacting experiences that he has
already related to her, such as the episode involving the village girl
I§£pp§, pp. 3-7] and the credit card, or the episode involving the
woman in the apartment [gpppp, pp. 127-130]. Transference also involves
the acting out of universally understood patterns of dominance such
as that which occurs in the sexual relationship described in the con-
versational interludes<mfmore archetypal patterns such as the one sug-
gested in the narrator's sexual encounter with the acrobat [§E§p§,
pp. 72-77].

So far, however, we have spoken about transference as if it were
actual. Obviously the parties involved in such a relationship are
changed in some way by the experience. But whether or not the narrator
or "actor" does, in fact, rid himself of the burdens of his past is
questionable. Kosinski, in discussion transference, says, ". . .the
game of expropriation is always momentary and hence illustory" [553,

p. 53]. But according to Kosinski, the protagonist believes it to be
real, and as we will see in a moment, KosinSki himself seems to sub-
scribe to the reality of transference as a basis for an aesthetic
theory.

Kosinski's theory of transference explains the central design of

the novel as well as the intended relationship of the novel to the reader.

60

The novel is organized around the framework provided by the conversational
interludes which occur more frequently in the last half of the book. We
should notice once again the quality of these interludes. They are
dramatic, that is, they consist entirely of dialogue between two people,
the narrator and his mistress. The language is entirely formal suggest-
ing the ritualistic nature of the situation and the relationship. And,
as I pointed out earlier, the narrator assumes the dominant role--master
or priest--the woman assumes the role of initiate. Their conversations
concern their relationship, which is on-going through most of the novel,
or the narrator's past. Thus, within this relationship the narrator
acts out a transference to his mistress. She assumes the role of the
other.

The interludes, fragmentary though they are, are written from an
objective point-of-view, and therefore establish a present moment from
which the novel is narrated. One imagines, in fact, that the episodes,
narrated in the first-person, constitute the forms of the past which
the narrator is transferring to his mistress. Yet the "story line" of
these conversations also ends within the span of the novel. In the
final episode, an unidentified woman finds that her lover has abandoned
her in a sea-side hotel. If we assume that this woman is the mistress
of the conversational interludes, then the last episode documents the
end of that relationship. From the narrator's standpoint, the relation-
ship must end because she has served her purpose. She is the victim
to whom the narrator has transferred the forms of his past--the episodes
of the novel. Because the narrator is "gone" in the final episode,

that episode is told from the "outside" of the nove1--in the third

61

person; this establishes another "present" moment, that from which any

writer writes.

The idea of the narrator's experience becoming part of this woman,
through transference, is elaborated metaphorically by the imagery of the

final paragraphs which describe her undressing and entering the ocean:

On the bottom a shadow glided over the seaweed, lending
life and motion to the ocean floor. She looked up through
the water to find its source and caught sight of the tiny
leaf that had touched her before [Steps, pg. 148].

The "tiny leaf" represents the interlude she shares with the narrator;
the shadow'which "ends life and motion to the ocean floor" represents

the changes in her life initiated by the transference of the narrator's

experience.

In addition to explaining the central design of the novel, trans-
ference also explains the relationship between the novel and the reader,
or at least the relationship Kosinski intended. The woman of the inter-
ludes and the final episode is a surrogate for the reader. Recall that

the final episode is prefaced with this italicized passage:

WHEN I'M GONE. I'll be for you just another memory descending
upon you uninvited, stirring up your thoughts, confusing your
feelings. And then you'll recognize yourself in this woman.
[Steps, pg. 146].

At least one other writer has suggested a similar interpretation
of the structure of the novel (Howard M. Harper, Jr., Contemporary_
Literature, V01. 12, No. 2, 1971, pg. 213, University of Wisconsin).
Harper, however, asserts that the woman of the apartment episode is the
same as the narrator's mistress who appears in the interludes. This is
odd, considering that. the narrator's story of the woman of the apartment
is told to his mistress within one of the conversational interludes.
Harper also suggests that the woman of the final episode (who he correctly
identifies with the narrator's mistress) is committing suicide as she walks
into the ocean. Aside from the lack of evidence for this interpreation,
it seems to contradict Kosinski's suggestions that the narrator's experi-
ence, once transferred, will continue to grow in the other.

 

62

"This woman" refers to the abandoned woman of that final episode,
but the "you" of this passage is the reader and it is to him that this
sentiment is addressed. Now it is the reader who has absorbed the forms
of the past of the author just as the woman of the interludes has absorbed
the forms of the past of the narrator-protagonist. The shadow of the
"tiny leaf" also falls on the reader. The reader discovers that he too
is a "victim", the other-as-object is his relationship with Kosinski
which is exactly Kosinski's intention:

At the end of every consecutive incident §pppp allows the
reader to break his journey--or to continue reading. In
the fissure separating these possibilities the struggle
between the book (the predator) and the reader (the
victim) takes place [A£p, pg. 48].

Transference takes place within a relationship described by
Kosinski in 555 pf ppp Splf as one of "growing domination." In many
respects, as the essay suggests, this relationship resembles Sarte's
version of "sado-masochism," the dynamics of which help to explain
the moral nature of the protagonist.

In his relation with others a governing pattern of behavior
emerges, a ritual, in which the protagonist meets the other--often a
stranger--they engage in a struggle of will, the other capitulates,
the protagonist then loses interest.

If there is anything in a person which enables that person
to remain independent, the protagonist of Spppp_attempts to

conquer that independence; if he succeeds he feels only
indifference [Art, pg. 54].

5A summary of Sarte's ontology is provided in the Appendix.

63

A nonsexual episode perhaps best illustrates this pattern: The protag-
onist becomes aware of a retired watchman [Spppp, pp. 103-105] who
guards his factory although it is shut down and he is retired. The
protagonist for no apparent reason engages in a contest with him,
hurling stones, attempting to force the man to give up his territory.
The watchman's defiance makes the protagonist even more determined. The
struggle escalates and the protagonist accidentally kills the man

with a rock.

The struggle is clearly one of pure will. The mere existence of
the watchman as a free agent (as a subjective consciousness) in his
own right constitutes a threat to the protagonist.

But the pattern is most often sexual: The protagonist has con-
cealed a microphone in a woman's apartment [Spppp, pp. 127-130]. Using
the information he obtains he becomes her lover; "Now I could manipulate
her: she was in love with me." He becomes bored with her, and he
considers introducing her to drugs, hoping that she might become an
addict ". . .she might free herself from what she had been. She might
emerge as a very different woman. . .Like a polyp, she would expand
and develop in unpredictable directions."

In another episode, the protagonist and a woman are out walking
at night when they are accosted by a group of men who rape the girl.
Following this their relationship changes. He begins to demean her.

. . .forcefully I subjected her to various experiments

stimulating her responses, exploring and violating her

in spite of her pleas and protests. She became an object

which I could control or pair with other objects [§p2p§, pp. 54-59].
Later, after a steady process of deterioration, he offers her as a "gift"

to the men at a party and leaves as an orgy begins.

64

The two general modes of relating to others are love and hate; the
protagonist of Steps has chosen hate (sadism). Therefore, the kind of
relationship he engages in is sado-masochistic, in which he assumes the
dominant role and strives to reduce the other to an object-for-him,
thus denying the other's existence as a subjective mind.

The original motive for turning to love or hate is the desire to
preserve one's own subjectivity--to resist becoming an object for the
other (Sarte). In sadism the motive is to totally deny the subjectivity
of the other by making him the object. By denying the other as a subjec-
tive mind, one "frees" oneself from the restrictions that the other
places on the self, for the existence of the other as subject is a
reminder of.facticity-vthe truth that the self does live in a world with
limits:

"Hell is other people." (Sarte) Hell is the inability to

escape from others who prove and prove again to you that you

are as they see you. Hell is also the inability to be alone,

to see yourself as your self sees you. Both convert the

subjectivity of the other into a menacing object and ori-

ginate the sado-masochistic struggle to impose our will on

another more dominantly than he can impose his will on us.

[Art, p. 61].

. . . . . . . . 6

In denying his factic1ty and lnSlStlng onlrustranscendence, the pro-
tagonist creates the illusion of "solipsism," a state in which he alone

exists, and thus causes others-as-objects to be. In one of the conver-

sational interludes, the protagonist discusses prostitution:

6The existence of self as a potential in the future. Transcendence
denies the limitations of the past or present. See Appendix.

65

[He] . . .she appears to be not so much a woman as a
desire that all men share in common.

[She] But after you leave her, she isn't even aware
that you exist.

[He] When I leave her, the awareness of what has happened
leaves with me: that awareness is mine, not hers

litres: p- 611-
In still another of the conversational interludes, he expresses a
similar idea:

[She] When you are inside me, why do you urge me to

caress myself at the same time? I feel you, so why
must I touch myself?
[He] I want you, you alone. Buy beyond you and me
together, I see myself in our love-making. It
is this vision of myself as your lover I wish
to retain and make more real.

[She] Then all you need me for is to provide a stage
on which you can project and view yourself,
and see how your discarded experiences become
alive when they affect me [Steps, pp. 130-131].

The sexual form of solipsism, as these passages suggest, is
narcissism. In both cases, the woman is an object-as-tool through which
the narrator can realize his own fantasies about himself. The insistence
that the reality of a fantasy about one's own self is the significant
reality implies a denial of the other's reality as subject as well as
the other's experience. Such a denial, however, contradicts the reality
of the situation: that the other does exist as subject, even though
the other accepts the role of object within the relationship that the

narrator has defined. Speaking of the relationship of struggle,

dominance and indifference, Kosinski writes:

66

But when that instant passes, he feels only emptiness and
he moves again from threat to conquest, from love to in-
difference. The issue of solipsism is always at the center
of such dark art--and the game of expropriation is always
momentary and hence illusory [Art, pg. 53].

This pattern, which I will call sado-masochistic, using Sarte's
general definition, is highly ritualized in all of the narrator's rela-
tions with others. In the sexual relationships, especially, he assumes
the role of priest and the woman assumes the role of initiate. The
conversational interludes we have just considered are a good example
of this. The formality of the language, and the dialectic, suggest a
catechism. In another interlude, the woman offers an explicit metaphor
in which she compares the rites of the church to the rites of fellatio:

. . .you know, it's a wierd sensation having it in one's
mouth. It's as if the entire body of the man, everything
had suddenly shrunk into this one thing. . . .I loved what
was ejected from you: like hot wax, it was suddenly melt-
ing all over me, over my neck and breasts and stomach. I
felt as though I were being christened: it was so white
and pure [Steps, pg. 83].

The importance of ritual for the narrator is explained by the
dynamics of the sado-masochistic relationship. One part accepts the
role of object by freely willing away his freedom. He no longer
strives to preserve himself as subject for the other. The fact of
his subjectivity, however, remains. What he presents, then, is one
aspect of his being.

In sado-masochism there is a lack of acknowledgement of the
self by the other. This relation, more than hate, is the
true opposite of love, for if love is the dual acknowledge-

ment of two selves, sado-masochism denies them totally.
[Art, pg. 58].

67

By restricting the other to only one aspect of his being, the narrator
does not have to acknowledge him as a subject, that is, as a self. It
is for this reason that the narrator seeks out strangers and interposes
himself in their lives. The stranger,especially,has no reality as a self.

we see strangers as blocks of objective traits, identified

with what lies in our past. We see them in theatrical terms;

the complexity of mutual identification still lies ahead

since we are not yet involved. . . .At this point, we have not

yet begun to care [Art, pg. 52].
The importance of ritual for the protagonist, then, is control. The
ritual offers a preconceived form in which the narrator can experience
a relationship without the danger of emotional involvement. The specific
ritual of sado-masochism is especially suited to this purpose since it
defines the other as object. In such a ritual the narrator retains the
privileges of author, director and principle actor. He is like God:

When the boy in Steps kills the children, he is performing a

drama at the level of a relationship with a stranger. He

selects only those facets of the individual which suit his

action. . . .Perhaps these murders satisfy the murderer's

sensecfifself and gain for him an increased solidity, a tem-

porary freedom, a previously unreachable equality, and at

the same time an absolute superiority. These are rituals

of drama, just as Sade's erotic situations are ritual acts

and dramas [Art, pg. 57].

Considering the meaning of control for the narrator of Steps, the

quotation from the Bhagavidgita which prefaces the novel is essentially

 

ironic:

For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the un-
controlled is there the power of concentration; and for
him without concentration there is no peace. And for
the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?

68

What is the meaning of transference in moral terms? Our discussion
of Steps and Kosinski's essay reveals his ambiguity on this point; and,

as we will see later in our discussion of Being_There and The Devil Tree,

 

 

this ambiguity persists.

To approach this question let us put the subject of transference
in perspective. We can think of transference as Kosinski's explanation
of the dynamics of the perverse where we are considering the relation-
ship of the perverse hero to others, to institutions or society. I
have suggested that the perverse is a special case of nihilism where
perversity is a reversal of what might be considered the normal human
creative/pro-creative instincts. In all of his fiction, the process

of transference is bound up with the perverse. Thus, in The Painted

 

§l£p_which shows the evolution of the perverse hero, the peasants
transfer their fears and superstitions to the Boy; he in turn, trans-
fers his accumulated experience to "others" through acts of violence;
in Spppp, a perverse hero transfers his past to others, particularly to

women in relationships of sexual domination; in Beinnghere, a perverse

 

society transfers its desires (which are a response to national

hysteria) to the protagonist who assumes the role of other-as-object;

 

and in The Devil Tree, the protagonist Jonathan Whalen explains to

the reader that his object in unburdening his past to Karen (transfering
it) is to free himself to act in the present, at the same time that

the Whalen family (equivalent in social status to the Rockefellers,
Fricks, Carnegies) functions as a screen onto which the public projects
(or transfers) their fantasies of wealth and power and glamor. In

the end Jonathan chooses the perverse as a response to a perverse

(upside down) world.

69

Thus, in discussing the moral implications of transference we
are led to a discussion of the moral implications of the perverse and
nihilism in general. And since these are the recurring themes of
Kosinski's fiction and his essays, we are really talking about the
moral implications of all of Kosinski's work.

Kosinski's discussion of the choice of the perverse implies two
motives. First, it is a response against an oppressive, suffocating

society or culture:

I

If sin is any act which prevents the self from functioning
freely, the greatest sources of sin are those formerly pro-
tective agencies like society and religion. The original
sense of "creative" becomes completely reversed; now the
only possible creative act, the independent act of choice
and self-enhancement, seems to be the destructive act--as in
Sade.. . .Perversion, defined as any act or practice or view-
point which subverts procreation in the physical sense, is
esteemed as a gesture of freedom. . . .In perversion, the
negation of "the creative" becomes literal-~an acting out

of a more fundamental negation. . .[Art, pg. 54].

The second motive, explicit in the passage above, is the desire of
the individual for self-realization. Kosinski expresses this desire

in many different ways throughout his work. A little further on in the

same essay, for example, he says,
. . .to him (the protagonist of Steps) the most meaningful
and fulfilling gesture is negative; it is aimed against
the collective and is a movement toward the solitude within
which the self can display its reality.
And it is on this basis that the protagonist of Steps justifies intro-

ducing a woman to drugs, the same woman he has seduced by placing

listening devices in her apartment,

70

It occurred to me then that if I introduced her to drugs

of a certain kind, and if she became addicted, she might

free herself from what she had been. She might emerge as
a very different woman. . .

Her addition might regenerate all that had become flabby
and moribund in her and at the same time break down

what was stiff and rigid; she would acquire new desires
and new habits and liberate herself from what she thought
of me, from what she felt for me. Like a polyp she would
expand and develop in unpredictable directions [Steps,
pg. 130].

Much of the protagonist's manipulative behavior might be interpreted
this way—-as a means of freeing others to realize their selves.
Kosinski, himself, hints at this early in his essay.

His entrance often leads to the metamorphosis of others:

the credit card in the first incident of the novel becomes

the magical object which transforms and releases the

peasant girl from herself [Art, pg. 50].
The theme of self-realization is expressed again in Being There by
"Chance," of whom the novel says,

By looking at him, others could open him up and unfold

him; not to be seen was to blur and fade out. Perhaps

he was missing a lot of simply watching others on TV
and not being watched by them [Being There, pg. 13].

and especially in The Devil Tree where Jonathan says of Karen, "I'm sure

 

there are aspects of my personality buried within me that will surface
as soon as I know I am completely loved" [The Devil Tree, pg. 32].

The destructive response towards an oppressive society and the
desire for self-realization are consistent in that they manifest an

impulse for personal existence--for self preservation. Nonetheless,

they suggest a contradiction: the destructive act, especially when

71

directed against others, negates the premises on which self-realization.
in the humanistic sense, is achieved.

So, the contradiction which we sense as ambiguity in Kosinski's
fiction and the essays does not belong essentially to him; it is rather
the reflection of a more fundamental moral ambiguity inherent in the
idea of the perverse itself, and therefore belonging to nihilistic
doctrine in general. Camus outlined this argument in his classic work
on nihilism, The Rebel. Rebellion, Camus says, begins as an altruistic
gesture, an act which affirms rather than disavows the dignity of the
individual, and which affirms the possibility of a just society. But
nihilism, which for Camus is a rebellion which recognizes no limits,
asserts that anything is possible and anything is permissible. Thus,
in denying morality, nihilism denies its original impluse--the altruistic
impulse which is rebellion. Nihilism contradicts its intentions.

It is then possible to say that rebellion, when it develops

into destruction, is illogical. Claiming the unity of the

human condition, it is a force of life, not death. Its

most profound logic is not the logic of destruction; it is

the logic of creation. . . .Nihilistic passion, adding to

falsehood and injustice, destroys in its fury its original

demands and thus deprives rebellion of its most cogent reasons.

[Camusp P9. 285].
This essential contradiction within the doctrine of nihilism identifies
the moral ambiguity of Kosinski. For perversity, as Kosinski defines
it, with reference to Camus, is the essence of nihilism:

In perversion, the negation of "the creative" becomes

litera1--an acting out of a more fundamental negation;

an example of this is the murder which Caligula attempts

when faced with the knowledge that "men die and they are

not happy." (Camus, Caligula) In this, murder is the

ultimate negation, for it genuinely devolves a thing from
a human being [Art, pg. 54].

72

we can see this contradiction in the two aspects of Kosinski's idea

of the perverse: first the "gesture of freedom," which implies a
desire for individual dignity; second, the destructive act which
implies a desire for a constructive life-giving society and religion.
Here, then, we find the original motive for rebellion, and the meaning
of perversity becomes literal, a reversal of the expected and normal.
The impulse towards social justice is turned into destructive anti-
social acts; the impulse towards self—realization and individual
dignity is turned into alienation from self.

In all of his public statements, and throughout his essays,
Kosinski asserts that the function of art is "subversion." By this he
means that a work of fiction, if successful, will undermine the
reader's presumably secure but illusionary view of the world and his
values, and open him to a different sort of vision. Thus, Kosinski's
ultimate purposes are moralistic:

As tradition is continually attacked in art, myths exist to
be broken. [A£p_p£_ppp_§pl£, pg. 67]. . . .Literature seeks
to describe what is, and, in the process, to do away with
what is not or what is no longer.

From this function of literature arises the necessity for

the subversive, for subversion makes its points by
indirection. . .[Art, pg. 67].

The vision that he offers is essentially "absurdist."

Formerly the wanderer returned home safely, but his wisdom
is disquieting and he has only affirmed what he has all
along suspected. He discovers that his quest in search of
inner life is a symbol for something lost or untouched by
him. The modern wanderer travels in an empty universe as
solitary as that which lies behind his own self. . .[§£E,
pg. 69].

73

This assertion is the essence of Heidegger, Sarte, and Camus--the

self exists in an empty universe; and an empty universe lies behind

the self. The universe is empty in the sense that there is no external
set of values, no design, no ultimate purpose, no God to give it
meaning. An empty universe lies behind the self in the sense that
consciousness comes out of nothing, knows itself only by what it is

not and returns to nothing.

What are the ethical implications of this ontological condition?
For Kosinski? For Sartre and Camus?

For Sartre, especially, it means that there is an aspect of
one's being which is inaccessible--lp principle: The for-itself has
no being other than that which is revealed by confronting that which
it is not--the in-itself. Although the for-itself desires absorption
into the in-itself, this is impossible because the for-itself comes
into existence by its separation from the in-itself. Thus, the self
never knows itself directly, but only as a reflection of everything
external to it. Perhaps, then, this is what Kosinski means by "something
. . .untouched by him."--that aspect of being which is inaccessible
in principle.

However, the for-itself does know itself, even if indirectly,
by it immersion in the world (being-in-the-world). Ethically, this
means that for the individual self-knowledge or self-realization even
if imperfect, is achieved by "choosing" being-in-the-world; i.e. to
accept responsibility for one's existence, one's choices and actions.
To choose otherwise is to deny one's being; on the basis Sartre speaks
of "bad faith" versus authenticity. From similar premises Camus

argues that one must choose life over suicide, and such a choice

74

implies the necessity for responsible action: rebellion is a choice
for life and responsible action; nihilism is a choice for death and
irresponsible action.

The choice of the perverse, on the part of the protagonist of
Spppp, is immoral from both viewpoints. For Camus, as I argued earlier
nihilism (in this case in the form of the perverse) is a contradiction
of the humanistic goals of rebellion. For Sartre, the perverse, as we
understand it, in the novel, in its particulars, is a denial of the
responsible freedom implied by being-in—the-world.

While he agrees in general with the ontology of Sartre and Camus,
Kosinski is ambivalent when it comes to the issue of responsible
freedom versus nihilism. On one hand he speaks about the transference
of the burden of the past in positive terms; on the other, he condemns
it as illusory, the "dark art of solipsism."

If we were dealing with the fiction alone it would be possible
to specualte that Kosinski was restricting himself to a portrait of
perversity, to raising the necessary questions, while reserving his
own judgement. But the evidence of the essays precludes that inter-
pretation; in the essays Kosinski does make judgements and reveals
intentions. In addition, we should consider the highly personal nature
of his work. All of this suggests that the perverse response is an
ideological and emotional matter with which Kosinski is still struggling.

For whatever reason, the ambiguity of Kosinski's fiction contri-
butes to its effect, for if the content of Spppp_had been mediated by
a framework of moral evaluation it would lack the power that every
reader has observed. As it is, §pppp_expresses a fantasy, for the mass

of its readership for whom nihilism as a doctrine remains a distant and

75

obscure philosophy but for whom the perverse, as an ultimate response

to an oppressive culture, is an ever-closer possibility.

Chapter 3 Being There

Beinquhere was published in the spring of 1971. By that time
Kosinski was considered an important literary figure and his new novel
received widespread attention. The reviews, however, were mixed. Some
complained of the thinness of the book, meaning both its size and depth.
Almost everyone agreed that it was a fable or parable, with one notable
exception: Irving Howe, writing in Harper's [July, 1971], asserted
that the novel ". . .constitutes a neat literary joke. Not the fable
or allegory that some reviewers have supposed, but something smaller,
fresher, more clever." Just what that joke wasHowe never explained.1

As with §ppp§, reviewers complained about the moral ambiguities

of the novel, but in the case of Beinnghere, more took that point of

 

view. For example, Peter Glassgold in The Nation: "A 'modern parable,'--

 

perhaps--so the jacket copy terms it--but unsuccessful, since its
. . 2 .
symbols are unclear and its moral elu51ve." Or James Farrant in Books

and Bookmen:

 

We are left to supply alternatives which do not fit. The

tale is scarcely compelling enough to suggest that this is
man leaving the garden for the cruel waste of the world--a
fable of the FALL. There seems to be, in the initial implaus-
ibility, a failure of the imagination which makes the reader
see things in this way. The novel is neither parable nor
realism because there are bits of both. At best it is

1Irving Howe, Harper's, July 1971, pp. 243-289.

2Peter Glassgold, "Taking a Bad Chance," The Nation, May 31, 1971,
pp. 699-700.

 

76

77

reducible to a suspense story because it cannot reach the
ambiguities of Ballard or the mathematical precision of a
Borgesian journey into past or future.3

Beinnghere combines an allegory of contemporary man, an investi-

gation into ontology, and a satire of a perverse society. So, Being

There repeats themes from The Painted Bird and of Steps, there are

 

differences, however. The allegory in Being There, expressed in a

 

reworking of Genesis, is restricted to the immediate situation of
contemporary man--his plight of finding himself thrust into the world
(being_there) by accident from which the hero takes his name ("Chance").
The ontological argument is centered, as in Spppp, on the problem of
"solipsism", or relations with others, but in contrast to the protagonist
of Spppp, Chance chooses to become an object for others rather than

make objects of them. Similarly, Chance does not choose perversity;
rather, when he is expelled from his garden, he is thrust into a

perverse society.

The first clue that Beipnghere is an ontological novel, or has

 

an ontological underpinning is Kosinski's choice of title; "being there"
is a conventional translation of Heidegger's term dasein meaning the
situation where man finds, or discovers, himself placed in the world..
The idea that consciousness finds itself at the center of its own
experience is expressed by most of the existential writers. Sartre, for
example, denotes the same idea with the expression "being-in-the-world"
(See Appendix).

The question of a Heideggerian influence came up in the Paris Review

 

3
James Farrant, Books and Bookmen, June 1971.

 

78

interview. Kosinski was explaining that as he wrote each novel he

assigned a code name to it:

And Beipg_There was Blank Page, and sometimes Dasein, a
philosophical term, difficult to translate, which could
mean the state in which one is and is not at the same time
. . .one of the American critics learned from my publisher
that Dasein was the code name, and months later wrote a
very negative review of Being There as a Heideggerian novel
--a terribly unfair thing to do. Had the code name been

Kapital, he probably would have considered the book a
Marxist novel.4

 

 

Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify this critic or the
review to which Kosinski refers. No doubt the reviewers insistence
that Kosinski had written a Heideggerian novel was unfair. But
Kosinski's last contention begs the question. He did not call the
novel Kapital, and, evidently, from the consistency of the titles he
employed over a period of time, he knew he had particular ideas in
mind. As we will see, these ideas are similar to those in §pppp, and
can be best explained, once again, by reference to Sartre.5

The ontological is manifested in Beinnghere, as in Steps, with

 

the issue of solipsism, which we have generally defined as the problem
of knowing that others exists as individual subjective minds. Chance,
in his existence at the opening of the novel, is possibly as close as
a human being could get to a purely solipsistic state: He believes

that he himself causes himself to be and causes others to be:

4Paris Review, Summer 1972, No. 54,"The Art of Fiction XLVI,
"Jerzy Kosinski", pg. 200. (For convenience, all future reference
to this review will be indicated by Pfizwith the page number.

5On the other hand, I do not mean that Kosinski is writing a
"Sartrian" novel, repeating the heresy of the critic Kosinski refers
to. I do mean that the ontology which the novel implies is best
explained by Sartre, but, in general, corresponds to the ontology of
the major existential writers.

 

79

By changing the channel he could change himself. He could go
through phases, as garden plants went through phases, but he
could change as rapidly as he wished by twisting the dial
backwards and forwards. In some cases he could spread out
into the screen without stopping, just as on TV people

spread out into the screen. By turning the dial, Chance
could bring others inside his eyelids. Thus he came to
believe that it was he, Chance, and no one else, who made
himself be [p3, pg. 6].

But Chance does recognize the subjectivity of others--or, in Sartre's
terms, that he exists as an object-for-others--and he is eager to
experience himself this way:

As long as one didn't look at people, they did not exist.

They began to exist, as on TV, when one turned one's eyes

on them. Only then could they stay in one's mind before

being erased by new images. The same was true of him. By

looking at him, others could make him be clear, could open

him up and unfold him; not to be seen was to blur and fade

out. Perhaps he was missing a lot by simply watching others

on TV and not being watched by them [p3, pg. 13].
In his desire to experience himself as object-for-others, he is exactly
the opposite of the protagonist of Steps who chooses to make objects
p£_others. Chance's motive for this desire is suggested by, "not to
be seen was to blur and fade out." In not being seen, one takes the
risk of losing one's reality; to be seen is to understand, in part, one's

reality. Therefore, Chance, who may otherwise strike the reader as.
simply another vegetable from the garden, does possess a motive: like
Kosinski's other protagonists, he is engaged in the project of realizing
his being. Chance does not, like the others, choose perversity. But

he does, like them, pursue his quest in a perverse world.

80

To achieve realization Chance must experience himself in the eyes
of the others who make up that world. Therefore, success depends, in
part, on them. The others can take two attitudes towards him: (1) they
can attempt to dominate him, reduce him to an object that can be used
or accounted for in the matrix of their own subjectivity; or (2) they
can make themselves objects and experience themselves in the context of
Chance's subjectivity. That is, they can choose "sadism" or "masochism."
In this case, the others, consisting of public and individuals, choose
masochism.

This may be a surprising assertion. After all, isn't Chance
pppp_by the society he is thrust into? Doesn't he, in fact, become a
political tool? While this is true, we must consider the particular way
he is used. Others "use" Chance by becoming objects-for-him. That
they do so is singularly ironic because Chance has no subjectivity to
which they can submit themselves. What little he did have--in the form
of solipsistic fantasies--he has given up in order to experience himself
as an object-for-others.. The others are confronted with a "blank page,"
the code name finally ascribed to Chance by the Russian super-spies.
The others, however, mistake Chance's objectivity as a detached object-
for-others, that aspect of being which we present to the other's sub-
jectivity in order to save and preserve our own self (see Appendix).
In this mistaken perception, the others invent a subjectivity that lies
behind the "blank page." That is, they invent Chance as "Chauncey
Gardiner."

They invent an authority so immense that it requires their maso-

chism, or better still, it justifies their masochism. For the public

81

at large, masochism takes the form of political subordination: Chance
is invented as super-statesman and moral leader:

'Thank you, thank you, Mr. Gardiner. Yours is the spirit

which this country so greatly needs. Let's hope it will

help usher spring into our economy. Thank you again, Mr.

Chauncey Gardiner--financier, presidential adviser, and

true statesman.‘ [p3, pg. 71].

In personal relationships, Chance is invented as mysterious,

authoritative, inaccessible,which makes him enormously attractive

sexually.

But unlike the other men with whom she was intimate,

Gardiner neither restrained nor repulsed her. The thought

of seducing him, of making him lose his composure excited

her. The more withdrawn he was, the more she wanted him to

look at her and to acknowledge her desire, to recognize her

as a willing mistress. She saw herself making love to him--

abandoned, wanton, without reticence or reserve [B2, pg. 79].
Chance cannot reject the sexual advances of the others (E.E. or the
strange man at the party) because he cannot reject what he does not
understand. But the others interpret his lack of response as a particular
kind of eroticism in which the loved one (in this case, the invented
Chance) requires the lover to turn inward on himself--into narcissism.
For this reason, the other invents Chance as an even greater, more
remote being, so self-sufficient, so perfect, that they are unworthy
of a direct sexual relationship. Therefore, they choose to become
objects of what they imagine is his voyeurism; they choose to become
objects-for-him; and here "masochism" assumes its more typical meaning

of one person becoming a sexual object for another. But what they make

love to, under his baffled gaze, are their own fantasies of self:

82

'Dearest. . .You uncoil my wants: desire flows within me,

and when you watch me my passion dissolves it. You make

me free. I reveal myself to myself and I am drenched and

purged.‘ (BE, pg. 123].

There is a parallel between the sexual and political responses:

Both the public and individuals invent Chance as a super-being and
become objects for his subjectivity. Thus, they choose masochism.
By becoming objects-for-him, they can indulge their fantasies of self
as individuals; as the public they indulge a fantasy of political
destiny, vague as it may be. By making themselves objects-for-Chance,
by inventing him, the others doom, at the outset, his project of
realizing his own being. He is finally turned back on himself: The
peace he experiences in the final scene is not merely a return to the
familiar, tranquil setting of the garden, but the momentary return to

a solipsistic identity with self.

Allegorically, Beipg_There expresses the historical situation

 

which is the "starting point for both existentialism and nihilism--the
'existential crisis'." And in this respect, Beipg_There reiterates

the theme of The Painted Bird.

 

Chance's explusion fromethe garden is a decidedly 20th century
interpretation of Genesis.7 The god of Chance's garden is not quite
dead at the beginning; but he is old, distant, unconcerned, arbitrary.
This god, like Eden's original, furnishes Chance with complete sustenance,

but--like the original--with a condition: Chance is forbidden knowledge

7A Similar interpretation of Beinnghere (as a retelling of Genesis)
is offered by Anatole Broyard in "The High Price of Profundity," New
York Times, April 24, 1971, p. 45.

 

83

of certain things--in this case, the world outside the garden wall.
This prohibition is based on the rationale that Chance is born of a
feebleminded mother and is incapable of living outside the garden. But
whether this is indeed the case is left open to doubt. There remains
the possibility that this is a myth designed to control and imprision
Chance; this too is a popular contemporary view of the Judaic-Christian
tradition.

But television brings Chance knowledge of the world outside the
garden, and later, when expulsion is imminent, vague stirrings of
interest excite him, and he looks to TV for the possibilities of
things to come. But TV is deceitful; the dreams that it embodies
are perversions of human work and desire. In this garden, television
is the serpent.

Unlike Adam, Chance does not willfully disobey the Old Man;
throughout this first part, Chance would rather remain in the garden.
His expulsion has nothing to do with sin or temptation; like his exis-
tence, it is a random accident--pure chance. And when the Old Man dies,
Chance puts on his clothes and leaves the garden--his regret equally
balanced with anticipation. As we of this century might say, Adam
has made himself in the image of his dead God.

In the first part, then, allegory points in two directions:
first, Chance is everyman or anyman, and the condition of anyman is to
find himself thrust, not by his choice, into a world, not of his making.
Historically, Chance is Western man after the 19th century naturalists
have taken the cosmic pulse and pronounced God dead.

In the remainder of the novel Chance becomes a "culture hero"

84

(in the words of John Aldredge)8 and super leader in an unconscious and
unwilled rise to power. Continuing the historical allegory, I suggest
that Chance is also a latter day messiah. This is less than saying he
is a Christ-symbol, and therefore safe, but more than saying he is only
a super-celebrity and therefore risky. In any case Chance does assume
the kind of historical role we associate with the second coming--he

is about to preside, willingly or not, over an apocalypse.

In this case apocalypse does not mean the intersection of the
divine with the secular world at the end of history. Here it means
tjmadisintegrationofa culture that has lost its soul by refusing to
accept the responsibility of its freedom. Instead the society portrayed

in Being_There has chosen the inversion of normal human desire; that is,

 

they have chosen perversity and this is the significance of the collective
and individual fantasies which the "others" (the entire society) project
onto the "blank page" of Chance.

Being There, then, is not only a satire of American and Russian

 

pretension, materialism and folly, it is also an allegory of a culture
that has lost the power to realize its being. In such a culture, it is
impossible for any individual, let alone Chance, to achieve self-realiza-
tion.

Beinnghere is about the absence of being in the modern

American world of power, and as a corollary the absence
of human beings in the world.9

 

8John Aldridge, "The Fabrication of a Culture Hero," The Saturdpy»

Review, April 24, 1971, pp. 25-27.

9Martin Tucker, Commonweal, May 7, 1971, pg. 221.

 

85

For the individual the implications of a perverse society are at the

very least, inauthenticity, or, if he chooses to adopt that perversity--
as does the Boy of The Painted Bird or the protagonist of gtepgf-nihilism.
For society, it means anarchy or fascism. This, at least, is one

implication of the ending of Being There: The group of politicians

 

in the smoke filled room who are choosing Chance as a vice-presidential
candidate are leaders of an extreme right-wing movement who have
unwittingly found in Chance the ultimate expression of their philosophy.
Two kinds of imagery dominate the book: images of television

and images of the garden; together they express the idea of the
perverse society. Each have literal meanings--since both are actual
institutions-—and each have symbolic meanings. We have seen, for
example that the garden is a literal place and an archetypal p1ace—-an
existential Eden. Television, too, is an actual social institution,
and inasmuch as it expresses collective dreams of a society, a symbolic
thing. In his discussion of "archetypal meaning" (The Anatomy of
Criticism) Northrop Frye defines two kinds of imagery, apocolyptic
and demonic.10 Of the first-—apocolyptic imagery-—Frye says:

The apocolyptic world, the heavenof religion, presents,

in the first, place, the categories of reality in the forms

of human desire, as indicated by the forms they assume under

the work of human civilization. The form imposed on the

vegetable world, for instance, is that of the garden, the

farm the grove, or the park. . . .The human form of the
mineral world. . .is the city.

The other side of the coin, demonic imagery, is the form of

 

10Northrup Frye, Anatomy 2£_Criticism, (Princeton University
Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1957), pp. 141-147.

86

the "world that desire totally rejects: the world of the nightmare
and the scapegoat, of bondage and pain and confusion. . .the world
also of perverted or wasted work, ruins and catacombs, instruments
of torture and monuments of folly."

What is relevant to us and our discussion of Being_There is (1)

 

the idea that society, the garden, and the city are the forms that
nature takes when transformed by human desire and work; and (2) that
desire, as Frey uses it, means a positive, constructive, moral force.
We will want to qualify this last idea in this respect: desire itself
can be perverted, and could, in that condition, seek after the world
that desire would ordinarily reject, the demonic world. It is likely
that Frey would object to this qualification, but, in any event, we
will exonerate him from responsibility for that and the interpreation
which follows:

The garden is the form that nature takes when transformed by
human work and desire; the particular garden from which Chance is
expelled is a small piece of nature transformed by his work and desire.
Accordingly, American society and its great cities (even the economy)
are all the "categories of reality" as transformed by human work and
desire. Therefore, there is a double irony in Chance's unconscious
use of gardening "metaphors" when questioned about the economy. The
economy is, in an archetypal sense, like the garden. And when human
desire is perverted, the result is the kind of society, city, and
economy into which Chance is cast out. It is a demonic world filled
with demonic imagery.

So the garden is not nature itself, nor is it a romantic image

of unspoiled nature. In the final scene, for example, Chance escapes,

87

momentarily, from the frenzy of the ball to a garden where he finds
peace once again. Here we find the juxtaposition of the two possi-
bilities. The garden, a human design imposed on nature, is the result
when desire is not perverted. The society--manifested by the ba11--is
the result when desire i§_perverted.

The garden, then, represents the world that unperverted human
desire seeks after. Television, the second kind of imagery represents
the world that desire ordinarily rejects but which it seeks after when
it is perverted.

The nature of TV, as Kosinski describes it from the point-of—view
of Chance, approaches a pure dream state:

The set created its own light, its own color, its own time.

It did not follow the law of gravity that forever bent all

plants downward. Everything on TV was tangled and mixed and

yet smoothed out; night and day, big and small, tough and

brittle, soft and rough, hot and cold, far and near [§T, pg. 5].
The dream is the state in which desires are realized; therefore, TV,
as the collective dream of the society manifests the collective desire
of that society. The content of TV are the categories of reality when
perverted human desire is imposed on nature; for this is the power of
art and media--to shape nature according to pure desire.

The shape of nature in the collective desire bears little
resemblance to the actual. Life, or reality, is attenuated. Chance's
notions of sex, which are taken from TV, are the most obvious example:

He. . .recalled situations on TV in which a woman advanced
toward a man on a couch or a bed or inside a car. Usually,
after a while, they would come very close to each other, and,

often they would be partly undressed. They would then kiss
and embrace. But on TV what happened next was always obscured:

88

a brand-new image would appear on the screen: the embrace
of man and woman was utterly forgotton. And yet Chance
knew, there could be other gestures and other kinds of
closeness following such intimacies. [§T, pg. 80].

While TV attenuates reality, it also distorts it. Because of

national demands, the media shapes its content into dramatic ritual:

The President's eyes were veiled with distant thought.

He watched the thousands in their ranks, who were reduced
by the TV screen to mere mounds of lifeless leaves swept
forward by a driving wind. Suddenly, down from the skies,
jets swooped in tight, faultless formations. . . .The
President's head once more pervaded the screen. He gazed
up at the disappearing planes; a fleeting smile softened
his face [§T, pg. 54].

Therefore, one reason that TV attenuates and distorts reality is that
it is acting out the collective dream which wants to shape reality
according to its desire. But there is another reason which has nothing
to do with purpose or motive. We return for a moment to ontology and
the subject of solipsism:

TV operates by presenting images, that is, a picture of an
exterior surface. What TV shows of people, therefore,is that detached
aspect of our being that we alienate from ourselves and present to

others in order to preserve our own subjective being. Chance considers

this:

The people who watched him on their sets did not know who
actually faced them; how could they, if they had never met
him? Television reflected only people's surfaces; it also
kept peeling their images from their bodies until they were
sucked into the cavern of their viewers' eyes, forever beyond
retrieval, to disappear. Facing the cameras with their
unsensing triple lenses pointed at him like snouts, Chance
became only an image for millions of real people. They would
never know how real he was, since his thinking could not be
televised. And to him, the viewer existed only as projections
of his own thought, as images. He would never know how real
they were [§T, pg. 68].

89

TV exacerbates the usual ontological difficulties of knowing
the other; what the other perceives, TV or not, is detached from the
inner self. Once again we are reminded that Chance's original purpose--
to realize his own being--is hopeless. Similarly, Kosinski implies
that the media--hailed by the McCluhanites as the electronic network
which will make a village community of the world--actually removes
people from each other and distracts society from realizing the natural
purposes of its desire.

If TV has the power to shape nature according to its desire
within the autonomous world of the flickering screen, it has the
greater power of shaping men and society by example. Chance looks to
TV for guides to the life he is experiencing:

Thinking that he ought to show a keen interest in what EE

was saying, Chance resorted to repeating to her parts of

her own sentences, a practice he had observed on TV [B3, pg. 40].
TV also shapes men and society by its power as social ritual. The
talk show host, for example, is like a priest who leads the community
of studio audience and millions of viewers in worship of a national
myth:

The host lifted his hand to silence the audience, but

the applause continued, punctuated by isolated boos.

He rose slowly and motioned Chance to join him at center

stage, where he embraced him ceremoniously. [B2, pg. 71].
It is Ralph Edwards, Merv Griffin, and Johnny Carson who now lead us in
worship in the tabernacle of TV.

That this is so troubles Kosinski. And in this respect, among

others, Being There approaches pure social criticism rather than allegory.

 

9O

Kosinski's arguments are not original and they may strike the reader

as slightly old-fashioned: TV distorts life; it confers power on an
individual merely by showing him; it creates a national myth which

the nation begins to act out. But Kosinski, on this level, i§_old
fashioned. He believes in the responsibility of the writer and the
responsibility of art. The writer (or artist) from Kosinski's point
of view is primarily concerned with involving the reader (or spectator,

for involvement is the requisite for moral reflection:

Interviewer

Your intent, then, is subversive. You want to involve, to
implicate the reader via his own imagination.

Kosinski

I guess I do. Once he is implicated he is an accomplice,
he is provoked, he is involved, he is purged. That's why

I won't give him moral guidelines. The reader must ask
himself questions. Was it his curiosity that dragged him
into the midst of my story, or was it recognition, his
complicity? For me this is the ultimate purpose of writing
[Paris Review, 92, 912,, pp. 206-207].

 

According to Kosinski, television permits the viewer (or spectator) to
remain uninvolved, and therefore television, among all the popular

media, is most guilty of failing the responsibility of art.

. . .Language requires some inner triggering; television
doesn't. The image is ultimately accessible, i.e., extremely
attractive. And I think, ultimately deadly, because it turns
the viewer into a bystander. Of course, that's a situation
we have always dreamt of. . .the ultimate hope of religion
was that it would release all of us from trauma. Television
actually does so. It 'proves' that you can always be an
observer of the tragedies of others. . . .When you read about
a man who dies, part of you dies with him because you have

to recreate his dying inside your head [Ibid., pg. 205].

91

In a perverse society, the artist (and art) presumably has the respon-
sibility to "subvert" those cultural fantasies which are the super-
structure of perverted desire. Instead, television expresses and
thereby reinforces them. In doing so television creates a society

in which few men, let alone Chance, have the possibility of self-

realization.

iv

80, in Beinnghere Kosinski presents us with an allegory of con-

 

temporary man and a satire of contemporary American life. Underlying
both is the presumption that our social institutions (politics, televi-
sion, and morality) are perverse in the sense that they distort or
invert the normal objects of human desire. This idea is consistent with

the view of society presented in The Painted Bird and Steps and in

 

The Devil Tree.

 

There is a clear difference, however, between Being There and

 

the other novels in the conception of the protagonist. Chance does

not choose perversity as a response to his world. He does, however,
demonstrate the same desire for self-realization that is implied for
the others. Perhaps because he does not (and cannot) choose perversity,
the conflict between the choice of perversity and the desire for self-
realization which we see in Kosinski's other novels does not occur in

Being There.

 

As in Steps, existential ontology provides the underpinnings of
the novel. Ontology, we should remember, is a description of being; and

therefore, Being There suggests that the perversity of contemporary

 

American life is the manifestation, the outgrowth of an ontological

92

condition; that is, that the morality of American culture is intimately
connected with the state of its being. Now this is an important and
persuasive idea, and few other American authors have attempted it.
Mailer, in Th§_5me£ican_gream_comes to mind as an exception. For these

reasons, Being There has an important place in contemporary American

 

fiction, despite whatever shortcomings it may have.

Chapter 4 The Devil Tree

 

The Devil Tree, Kosinski's latest novel, was published in the

 

spring of 1972, and was the least warmly received. Those who were

cautious in their response to Beinnghere came down hard on The Devil

 

Tree. Time's review was devastating:

Postulate a neurotic, hopeless main character, then spend

200 pages proving that the character is hopeless and

neurotic. . . .The novel's situation--it is too static to

be called a plot--seems better suited to one of Harold Robbins'
meat operas than to the work of a man who once won the
National Book Award (for Steps) and who is now a professor

of prose and criticism at Yale. . . .The author's other

novels are as impressive as this one is futile.1

Admittedly, The Devil Tree is a problematic novel. Unlike Steps,

 

it does not consist of individual episodes, each of which is structurally
complete, but rather fragments, narrated from different points of view.
While there is a plot (contrary to Time's opinion), the method of nar-
ration and the book's design make it difficult to perceive. In

contrast to Kosinski's other work, the style is often turgid: the
protagonist talks at great length about his feelings in an often

academic way; and his preoccupations often seem adolescent. As in
Bgipg_ghg£§, Kosinski attempts to integrate some large symbols and

ideas into a large-scale vision of contemporary culture, and is in

Being There, the vehicle he uses seems too thin. In addition, there

 

is ambiguity about the protagonist's reliability as a narrator and

1John Skow, "Strike It Rich," Time, February 19, 1973, p. 88.

93

94

there is no clear moral-norm. As a result, the novel seems obscure

or thematically confused.

Despite these problems, The Devil Tree does have impact and often

 

manages to generate the fascination which is Kosinski's talent. For
one thing, the novel does capture-~despite occasional caricature--the
feel of modern urban mania. Jonathan and Karen's relationship is a

classic contemporary study. Moreover, in The Devil Tree, Kosinski

 

finally expresses, as a fictional theme, the conflict that he
expressed earlier in his essay on Sggp§_and which underlies his other
novels--the conflict between a desire for self-realization and the
impulse towards the perverse. Consider the plot:

Jonathan Whalen, the scion of an American industrial
family, peers of the Carnegies, Fricks, Phipps, has returned
from a stay abroad. We learn that he has recovered from an
episode with drugs in a hospital in Rangoon. During his trip
his mother has died, presumably a suicide. His father had
died some time before. He is sole heir to his father's for-
tune and a majority stockholder in Whalen corporation.

But Whalen is uninterested in the corporate world; and
although his money provides him with almost super-human ability
to wield power and influence, he uses it to indulge personal
and seemingly eccentric whims. His two main preoccupations
are his past, especially his childhood and his relations with
his mother and father; and his present relationship with Karen.
He struggles with both, seeking some sense of identity. He
establishes himself in an apartment with servants and a chef;

he buys an American car, a Ford, and has a motor from an

95

Italian car installed; he joins an encounter group.

Yielding to pressure from the Howmets, majority stock-
holders, friends of his parents, and his own god-parents, he
makes a gesture at entering corporate society. He joins a
fraternal order; he toys«with the idea of becoming an active
member of the corporation.

The relationship with Karen disintegrates. He plans
a vacation with the Howmets, then leaves them stranded on
a sand-bar to drown.

At the close of the novel, he recovers from a long
illness to find himself in what appears to be a mental
hospital in Geneva.

From the ideological point of view, the plot of the novel is
simple: Jonathan desires self-realization, he seeks it in an essentially
perverse society; finding no satisfaction (no hope) he chooses perver-
sity, a choice which is signalled by his murdering the Howmets and his
subsequent descent into madness. We observe Jonathan's choice of the

perverse, just as we observe the same choice in The Painted Bird; and

 

as in The Painted Bird, many of the determinants in that choice are

 

psychological. In The Devil Tree, however, the protagonist is self-aware

 

in a way the Boy is not. He is also educated in the popular Freudian
jargon and uses it in talking about his own experience analytically.

In this respect, of course, Jonathan is very unlike the protagonist of
Sggpg, although they share an essential attraction to the perverse. In

one of the earliest episodes of The Devil Tree, for example, Jonathan

 

convinces Barbara that he has murdered the old lady who owns the villa

in which they are staying, an act reminiscent of the narrator of Steps.

96

Jonathan and the narrator of Steps also share a preoccupation with the
idea of "transference,” although Kosinski represents it in much

different terms in The Devil Tree, an inconsistency which will figure

 

in our discussion of the moral dilemma underlying his fiction.

In regard to the Freudian overtones, it is unclear whether they are
part of Kosinski's characterization of Jonathan and possibly satiric,
or whether they are Kosinski's own ideas spoken through Jonathan as
mouthpiece. This problem is one of several that arises because Jonathan's
reliability as a narrator is never established. It is also interesting
to notice that the ontological preoccupations that dominated Sggp§_and

and Being There are not apparent in The Devil Tree. Perhaps Freudian

 

psychology has indeed displaced ontology as a theoretical base for
this novel and the Freudian overtones are, in fact, serious arguments
on Kosinski's part.

When Jonathan chooses the perverse, he chooses in response to a
perverse society. The perversity of that society is documented in the
fragmentary monologues that are directed at Jonathan in which the
speakers, from all walks of life, unveil an array of corruption, vice
and brutality. But mainly Kosinski comes at American society from the
top in this novel. He aims at the most simpleminded form of what has
become known as the American myth-~what we call the Horatio Alger
story in which humble beginnings, the "protestant work-ethic",personal
righteousness, and hard work result in power, wealth, and glory. The
Whalen family, of whom Jonathan is the sole survivor and heir, embodies
that myth. So, Jonathan's probings of the past provide the thematic
link between his choice of the perverse and the foundations of a

perverse society.

97

As Jonathan explains his relationship with his deceased parents,
it constitutes the classical psychoanalytic case: His father, whom
he hated, was cold, distant, domineering and cruel. Jonathan's mother,
with whom he sympathized, was passionate, sensitive woman, seemingly
dissatisfied and bored with her life in corporate society. But she too
was distant:

I still suffer from my father's rejection and my mother's
indifference. Yet I know that I am wrong to accept this
unjustified and self-inflicted pain. I deserve no punish-
ment at all for being who I am LET, pg. 35].

In his preoccupation with his mother's suicide, Jonathan reveals
both sympathy and guilt as well as a longing for an affectionate bond.
She appears often in his dreams:

I saw her in her bedroom in Watch Hill, swallowing red

pills, choking, trying to reach for her phone, staggering

from her bed, with blood running down her leg [22, pg. 89].
The actual suicide, we learn elsewhere, was caused by an overdose of
pills. What then is the blood running down her leg? This can only
have sexual connotations--perhaps menstruation or birth. For Whalen,
his mother's fate is woven with his own existence:

Last night I dreamed I was in Africa, knowing that my mother

was ill and hoping that my trip would be her punishment for

giving birth to a child who was not to fulfill his father's

dreams [22, pg. 61].

Throughout the novel, Whalen, like a detective, investigates the
past. He searches his memories, questions friends and associates of
his parents, and on one occasion revisits the family mansion, which

has been closed since his mother's death. His companion on this trip is

98

black girl he picks up in a bar in Pittsburgh. He has sex with the
girl (perhaps in his parents' bedroom), wanders about the house. He
looks in his mother's bathroom:
In the medicine cabinet he could see an infinity of drug
samples, many still in the manufacturer's packages, accom-
panied by printed inserts indicating dosage and warnings. . .
'overdosage might produce stupor, coma, shock, respiratory
depression and death.‘

He reads his parents' letters, newpaper clippings, their obituaries,

his mother's school yearbook. But none of this, he says, moves him:

The memories triggered no emotion [22, pg. 133].

Or is this another instance of the control that Whalen desires and hates?
In the midst of the memorabilia, while he is making love to the strange
black girl on his (mother's?) bed, Whalen remembers a deep-water snake
he had seen once while skindiving: "He envied the snake's ability to
control its heartbeat, to slow its pace even as it attacked." [gg, pg.
126].

The exact nature of his mother and father's relationship is left
to our speculation. But the facts of their biographies, which Jonathan
reads during his visit to the closed-up house, are highly suggestive
[93, pp. 125-136]: Whalen's father was born in Colorado; he never
completed his grade school education: "He was forced at the age of
thirteen to leave school to find work after the death of his father. . ."
Beginning his career as an office boy in an aluminium company at four
dollars and eighty-five cents a week, Whalen ends up as a major

industrial pioneer, and is a peer of the legendary figures of American

99

industry, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, etc. The character of
Whalen, Sr., is obviously the stuff Horatio Alger novels are made of.

Jon's mother comes from the other end of the social spectrum.

The family home, we learn is at Pierre Magnol plantation in South
Carolina. She attends "Samuel Tuke Upper School for Girls" She is a
Merit Finalist. So Whalen's mother enjoys the blessings of beauty,
brains and money from the start.

The marriage of Jonathan's mother and father has obvious mytho-
logical overtones: The poor boy with talentenuidetermination wins the
beautiful and rich princess. The meanings of this mating are especially
significant in American folkmyth: tough and ruthless Yankee urban wins
vulnerable and wealthy Southern aristocrat; vulnerable perhaps because
the aristocracy begins its decay in the industrial age. Since Whalen,
Sr., embodies the industrial age, there are the additional connotations
of sexuality where sexuality implies possession and destruction. Even
their deaths--drowning in heavy storms off the coast, and suicide,
have a touch of the heroic, the tragic, the mythic.

While Jonathan is the offspring of a "divine" union in mythological
terms, he is a cursed rather than a blessed child. In fact, we could
view Jonathan's problem as that of a person with ordinary instincts
and talents attempting to live with (or within) a myth. The text of
this myth--created by the media and the corporate peers of his parents--
calls for Jonathan to assume the mantle of heir, but it is a role that
Jonathan is ill-suited for. The reality of his parents, their lives,
etc., remains a mystery which he cannot penetrate. He too remains an

outsider. He has only fragmentary glimpses--in memory--of his parents,

100

plus the information he can find from those few persons who knew them.
From these persons he receives a contradictory picture. And there is

a large disparity between what he himself knows and the public image
or myth. "Horace Sumner Whalen," the newpaper obituary reports, "reads
Dickens for inspiration and listened to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in

D minor at least once a day." LET, pg. 130]. This is the same man who,
as Jonathan has recalled earlier, beat a dog mercilessly because it
would not stop barking.

Speaking of his mother, a newspaper obituary reports that "Mrs.
Whalen was grief-sticken for years after her husband's death despite
the consolation of her youth, and her son Jonathan Whalen has been
living abroad, where he combines study with travel." Nothing in this
gives any clue to the reality of Jonathan's life or the life of his
mother following the death of Whalen, Sr. Jonathan, as we have learned,
has flunked out of school, has had an episode with drug addition. His
mother has travelled throughout Europe with a lover, experiencing
bouts with alcoholism and drugs.

This disparity between the public myth about the Whalen family
and the reality of their lives signifies not only the failure of the
American folk-myth of success, it illustrates as well, the difficulties
for the individual who attempts to break through social myth-building
in an attempt to find his own self. This theme is consistent with that

of Being There where Chance, the "blank page" protagonist of the novel,

 

is the center of myth-building on a national scale.
Jonathan has created his own explanation (ergo his own "Psychology")
of himself. Most often he describes himself in terms of oppositions.

His real private self, he asserts, is "violently anti-social--like a

lOl

lunatic chained in a basement, grunting and pounding the floor while
the rest of his family, the respectable ones, sit upstairs, ignoring
the tumult. I don't know what to do about the family lunatic: destroy
him, keep him locked in the cellar or set him free?" [22, pg. 13].
This metaphor expresses, of course, the actual contradiction between
the public respectable image of the Whalens (Whalen, Sr., reading
Dickens for inspiration) and their private lives (Whalen Sr's. cruelty).
At other times Jonathan sees himself as divided between a "mani-

pulative adult" and a "child who craves acceptance and love.":

Now I know that I have really tried to conceal the child

at the expense of the adult [22, pg. 23].
This introduces the theme of repression and control, a theme which runs
through all of Jonathan's comments about himself, as well as comments
made about him by others. Jonathan almost always identifies feelings
of violence with "the child" within him. And it is clear that these
feelings began in childhood out of frustrations at not receiving
acceptance and love:

I feel my old fear of violence returning. It began in early

childhood when I lay in bed and listened to my father rage.

He also took out his fury on my dog, Mesabi. One night in

watch Hill, I woke to Mesabi's yelping. I put on my bathrobe

and went down to the beach. My father stood at the water's

edge, grasping the dog by the collar and punching its head

and ribs with his fist. The dog howled with pain. I did

not interfere. I simply watched, torn by pity for the dog,
anger at my father and hatred for my own weakness [22, pg. 36].

The major conflict in Whalen, then, is that of the desire for acceptance
and love versus rage and anger, a conflict which began in childhood

and which he identifies as the child within him. As an adult he

102

represses the conflict, and the emerging personality as cold, detached,

controlled:

My depressions are no longer such natural urges as sex,
sleep and hunger. Now they are completely calculated.

I could as easily have done something else yesterday after-
noon, but I chose to enact a familiar ritual, to dull my
mind and lose myself completely.

Still he yearns for something else. And his desire for a relationship
with Karen is evidence of this:
I tried to explain that the freedom I have always desired
has nothing to do with being able to travel or with surren-
dering responsiblity; it means not being afraid, not dis-
guising myself and not performing, not structuring my feelings
to gain another's approval [22, pg. 83].
Although Jonathan wants to be known for what he is, being possessed
of enormous self-hatred, he cannot believe that anyone will accept
him once they know him. When a friend relates the facts of his
marriage, Jonathan comments:
I began to see that he loved her in spite of her self-
contempt; he simply ignored her perception of herself and
created his own vision of her. It occurred to me that I
could never love like that, nor could I respect anyone who
didn't share my perception of myself. I have always suspected

everyone who likes me of having poor judgement. I despise
them for being so easily taken in [22, pg. 59].

And speaking of the encounter group, Jonathan says:

. . .I remained detached from the group, aware that when
people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely
[91] .

This is consistent with one of Kosinski's comments in his essay

on Steps. Discussing the psychology of his protagonist Kosinski

103

paraphrases Sartre:

Hell is the inability to escape from others who prove and

prove again that you are as they see you [Art, pg. 61].
But despite Jonathan's resistance to other's perceptions of him and
their interpretations of his personality, he asserts that he responds
according to the roles they create for him.

My presence in the group has been important if only as a

constant reminder that no one possesses completely consistent

emotions. I can be described as neither a hostile nor a

sympathetic person. My sense of myself is entirely relative.

My hostility and sympathy vary, depending on whom I'm with:

I compete or I pity. Either I'm not good enough for anyone

or I'm too good for everyone [22, pg. 149].

Jonathan's project, then, is to escape the central conflict
(rage versus craving for love) which results in his adopting the role
of manipulative detached adult. He desires to free himself from the
roles created by others in order to realize his many possibilities, his
"many selves." He is embarked on a project of "self-realization."
Jonathan's relationship with Karen, which dominates the novel,

is central in his quest for self-realization:

The possibility of becoming close to Karen is more exciting

than anything else has ever been. I begin to feel that I

could be loved for whatever I am, not for my actions or my

appearance. Everything about me would be acceptable; every-

thing would be a reflection of my central self. I'm sure

there are aspects of my personality buried within me that

will surface as soon as I know I am completely loved [22, pg; 32].
As a move towards her acceptance, he attempts to relate his past to

her; her ability, or so he imagines it, to accept his past without

condemnation will give the kind of "freedom" he desires, and may,

104

he speculates, provide the basis for love:

I have given Karen my notes and the photographs from Burma,
India and Africa. I gave them to her because I wanted to
show her something tangible from my past to make her under-
stand it. At the same time I wonder what this new knowledge
about me will mean to her. I am always afraid that some
incident from my past will destroy other people's affection
for me. Since I have no idea exactly what that incident
will be, I have learned to be defensive, I have become a
master of the art of concealment, of tailoring my remini-
scences to the person I'm talking to. Generally this means
suppressing anything that might conceivably sound neuseating
or foul. But with Karen I'm not so frightened. With her
there is no need to hide those things in me that seem bizarre
or ugly [22, pg. 31].

Jonathan's desire to relate or "transfer" the past to another seems
similar to that of the protagonist of Steps, yet there seems to be a
remarkable difference in their motives. For the protagonist of §Egp§,
as we have seen, the past is a burden to be transferred to a "victim"

where it may . .continue its concerous action." [252, pg. 45].
His motive for accomplishing this "transfer" is to escape the past,
and we concluded on that basis that he was guilty of bad faith. For
Jonathan, on the other hand, the past may be a burden but his object
seems to be not so much to escape it but to understand it. He does
not seem to regard Karen as a victim (an object) but rather as another
subjective consciousness, so that Jonathan's attitudes seem to corres-
pond with Kosinski's descrition of love as he expresses it 222_§£E g:
. . .the attempt to be simultaneously subject and object,
and is the willing relinquishment of the single subject to

a new subject created from two single ones, each subject
enhanced into one heightened self [Art, pg. 59].

105

This is the same project of loving which, we inferred, was the original
project for the protagonist of Steps, and failing which he chose sadism
as a mode of relating to others. As in Steps, the project is doomed

in The Devil Tree. Both Jonathan and Karen are unequal to the task,

 

perhaps Karen more unequal than Jonathan.

The central psychoanalytic fact about Karen is her inability to
have an orgasm. This is mentioned early in the novel and is a
recurrent theme throughout. Jonathan recalls an early experience with
Karen: After a luncheon given by one of Karen's roomate's parents,

she and Jonathan are left alone in the house [22, pp. 29-31].

She was still aroused, but when I asked her if I could enter
her, she said she didn't want to come. She insisted that

I wouldn't like what happened to her after she came, that she
cried and screamed. I kissed her eyes, her hair, her mouth
and told her how much I wanted to feel myself inside her.
Again she resisted, saying that she didn't need to have an
orgasm in order to like me. My fingers played with her

flesh and I kissed and sucked her again. Her body twisted
and quivered, she was panting and very wet, but she did

not come [22, pg. 29].

What Karen expressed to Jonathan in this episode is her fear of orgasm;

later it is her inabiligy:

I often have this nightmare. I hear a man's voice coaxing
and urging me and I suddenly freeze and say: 'It isn't fair.
You're taking advantage of me.‘ I feel like screaming, but
then I think, what the hell, I need it and I want it, so

why not? Still I can't come. It's emotional, I know, but
what can I do about it? Sometimes, when the sex is very good,
I feel intense pleasure, but I never reach the final hill,

I stay detached [22, pg. 66].

In another passage [22, pp. 114-115], "Karen was surprised by all
the articles on masturbation in '1ibertated' newspapers and magazines,

complete with diagrams and detailed instructions." She tells Jonathan

106

that she learned how to masturbate early: "I never imagined people
needed to be taught." This would imply her own freedom from sexual
hangups. But as she continues, she reveals once again her inability
to achieve orgasm, a problem which, adopting the latest feminist
rhetoric, she blames on men:

She also admitted that in bed she can never tell a man what

she really wants. 'I've been conditioned,‘ she said, 'to

please men and to take my pleasure only from pleasing them;

I don't know what I want. When a man does ask me how he

can make it good for me--and that doesn't happen much--I

can't tell him what I want. I've learned to fake coming,

but I despise those men who believe my act.
As she continues she reveals an even more fundamental and probably
more relevant problem:

. . .even more she dreaded the thought of sex with men with

whom she could honestly abandon herself. She was afraid

that once they saw what she really was, they would leave her.
Karen's relationships with men swing between fear and resentment on
one side and desperation on the other. In one of her "feminist" moods
she phones Jonathan and fires off this salvo:

Karen was furious that anyone could prefer the synthetic

scents of raspberry, jasmine, orange blossom and champagne

to the pungency of the glands. 'They force us to take the

pill,‘ Karen said, 'they force us to shave our hair, they

want to penetrate our brains as well as our vaginas.‘ She

did not say who 'they' were, and I didn't ask [22, pg. 111].
But more often, she puts herself in degrading, humiliating positions
viz a viz men; she willingly makes herself a sexual tool:

Once, in front of me, Karen said to him, 'I would like to fuck

you, baby, until, until. . .' Then she dragged him into the
bathroom and slammed the door. When she came out, she said

107

to him, 'Will I see you again?’ and he answered, 'I don't

know. That depends on how bad you want it.‘
And despite her protests of aversion to sexual fads, Karen continually
fantacizes and/or experiments, almost complusively. Behind her

decisions there is the fashionable creed of experience for experience's

sake.

I'm sick of my friends who suck guys off in parked cars
because it's trendy. I'm tired of sexual fads [22, pg. 65].

After they all had smoked some grass, the couple asked Karen
if they could make love in her bedroom. Karen offered to go
shopping. 'Stay,‘ they said. 'Why don't you join

us?‘ She did. . . .Karen told me how arousing it had been
to fantasize making love to them and then actually do it.
She claimed that during this experience she was more excited
and uninhibited than ever before [22, pg. 116].

The contradictions in Karen's behavior and attitudes are mani-
festations of the deeper conflict expressed in her inability to achieve'
orgasm: the desire for spontaneity versus her fear of losing control
and of revealing herself. Underlying both is the fundamental fear of
rejection. She expresses this conflict in her behavior: on one hand,
a masochistic abandon, on the other, detachment. The result is her
frenzied search for satisfaction, impulsive and desperate tries at
experience.

This conflict is the exact counterpart of Jonathan's, and there-
fore, it is part of the irony of their relationship that she is more
critical of his detachment and control than any other aspect of his
character:

When we were lying next to each other, Karen said that now
that she was liberated, she could understand me better. My

108
biggest hang-ups, she said, were my lack of spontaneity, my
steadiness and my unyielding self-control. I told her it
wasn't any help knowing she could read or fall asleep so
easily while I stayed awake and tense. She slid her hand
along the inside of my thigh and when I didn't react she turned
away and said, 'Good night, ice cube, maybe we'll clink
against each other during the night.‘ It was as though she
had totally forgotten how many times she had turned me down,
as though she weren't the most self-controlled woman I had
ever known. She fell asleep while I was telling her this.
It was just perfect [22, pg. 42].

In a world where hypocrisy is the common coin where, as Camus
says, crime has assumed the mantle of reason, the positive act is
undistinguished, it is absorbed and finally rendered meaningless. In
such a world, the perverse is the only effective statement left.
Jonathan's murder of the Howmets is perverse in that it is a destructive
act committed by a man who yearns for creative life. But it is not
gratuitous. The Howmets genuinely represent the hypocrisy of society
which Jonathan finds utterly deficient: "decent" bland insensitive
people who mouth those platitudes which justify their excercise of
power. While Jonathan's plan to help the Bowery derelicts may be
simpleminded [22, pp. 182-184], Mrs. Howmet's refusal to consider it
reveals her callousness. Dismissing it, she suggests instead that
Jonathan join an Order, to which her husband belongs and to which
Jonathan's father belonged.

Later as Jonathan is initiated, he reflects that he is following
a herd instinct; he feels that "he had let himself get caught in an
irreversible process." But it is unclear whether the process is
towards his absorption in the society which the Howmets represent or
towards their eventual destruction. Is this the point at which

Jonathan decides to murder them? Regardless, the murder itself is

cold and calculated; planned far in advance, and here Jonathan most

109

resembles the protagonists of Steps and The Painted Bird.

 

The perverse is the ethical sense turned upside-down, the appro-
priate act for a world in which everything, like the boababab tree
(The devil tree) is upside down. Up to the point at which he murders
the Howmets, Jonathan has made various attempts to begin some sort of
life after his return to the U.S.--his relationship with Karen, his
half-hearted attempt at corporate social life, the encounter group.
The murder of the Howmets, an act of quiet desperation, signals the
failure of these attempts. The murder is the dividing line in the novel
and therefore the climax. Following this episode, Jonathan descends
rapidly into madness. His plan to become a world ski champion is a
last fling at finding satisfaction through the exercise of power and

money.

ii

In design, The Devil Tree is the most unconventional of Kosinski's

 

four novels. The story is told in fragments rather than episodes, where
episodes are finished and closed actions. The story is told from
JonathanHSpoint-of-view, sometimes in the first person, sometimes in
the third. Often there are fragmentary monologues, apparently directed
at Jonathan, representing sheer input. These monologues, cinematic
in quality, remind one of Dos Passos, and produce a similar sense of
speed, frenzy, and complexity in a media-dominated urban culture. The
effect is sometimes overpowering as it must be on Jonathan who, because
of his long absence, must feel bombarded.

The content of these monologues represents a corrupt, hypocritical

society whether they are spoken by drug dealers, con men, or corporate

110

types. All are similar in that what they offer can have no relevance

to Jonathan in achieving his project of self-discovery; on the other
hand they do reveal to Jonathan what he is not, or what is not possible
to him. This view of society is consistent with Kosinski's other novels,
and is probably best expressed by this comment from Kosinski's essay

on §E§E_5 "In a time of crumbling systems the protagonist of §£gps
searches for symbols and finds that what is offered him is paper-thin."
[555: pg- 62] .

Underlying the pattern of fragments which form the text of the
narrative, there is a story, beginning with Jonathan's return to the
States, climaxing in his murder of the Howmets, and ending in his
confinement in a mental hospital in Geneva. But it is not a story
consisting of specific events linked one to the other in an identifiable
period of time. While there are specific events, most of the narrative
consists of general conditions, states of mind, evolving over an

unspecified time.

The Devil Tree presents the reader with particular difficulties:

 

is Jonathan a sympathetic protagonist? is he a reliable narrator? is
there a moral-norm in the novel? Does it lie in Jonathan or the author?
The lack of a defined moral-norm or a reliable narrator could be part
of the author's intention: perhaps he means to show a world of moral
ambiguities. Certainly in his early novels he avoids taking any direct
moral position.within the narrative. His narrative method is wholly
Objective; even when the protagonist narrates in the first person, he
reveals little of his feelings, motives or thoughts. The exception

is The Painted Bird, and even there, a good deal of emotional material

 

111

is reported without commentary. Only in the two essays, do we learn

that he considers the Boy in The Painted Bird a "negative hero" and that

 

he considers the protagonist of §pgps a man who deludes himself. Further
the lack of a defined moral-norm seems consistent with Kosinski's

ideas of "subverting" the reader, to force him to become engaged with

the fiction by presenting him with choices, puzzles and paradoxes. The
difficulty, regardless of Kosinski's intentions, arises in two areas:
first the design and second the moral values that are expressed.

While the story is told from Jonathan's point-of-view, some is
told in the first person and some in the_third. There are also fragments
written as direct asides (or monologues) to the reader, spoken by
JOnathan; these are almost wholly emotional material, and reveal a
great deal about what Jonathan is thinking. Those sections written
in the first person, however, are less revealing, and sometimes resemble
the episodes in §Epp§, Why, for example, does Jonathan torture Barbara
by pretending to have murdered the old lady who has lent them her villa?
The answer, if any, must be inferred. Those sections written in the
third person are even less revealing. These are narrated from a
strictly objective viewpoint; that is, they give the reader no inkling
of what Jonathan is thinking at the time. Why, again, does Jonathan
murder the Howmets? The answer must be purely speculative. All of
this has its impact on the question of a moral-norm and whether or not
Jonathan is a reliable narrator--there is no adequate basis to judge
Jonathan.

But there is one point of reference we can assume is reliable.

The Objective point of view of the author is meant to be reliable even

112

if only in the matter of fact. Thus, when Kosinski, from his third
person point of view, tells us that Jonathan goes to the family home
outside Pittsburg one night, and when he reports the contents of
letters and newspaper clippings in the same scene, we can be sure that
Kosinski intends that we accept these as factual.

To a certain extent, then, we can check Jonathan's reliability
by comparing his observations of fact to those provided in the third-
person narrative. For example, the contents of the news clippings,
the letters, in the same scene seems to corroborate his experience of
his parents. While these instances are limited, there are enough to
suggest that Jonathan is meant to be a reliable narrator, even a
sympathetic protagonist, but there is no certainty of this.

The issue becomes even more confused when we examine the moral
values that are expressed in the novel, or the thematic sense. Even
though Kosinski's preoccupations seem to be the same, the angle of
approach is very different. Like Kosinski's other protagonists,
Jonathan is obsessed with the past; he desires to "transfer" his past
experience to another person--a woman--and sexuality is the key
instrument of this transfer; for the protagonist of §E§ps, all of these
preoccupations were manifestations of a generally negative moral stance;
his obsession with the past and his desire to "transfer" it to another
person where "he assumes that its cancerous action will continue. . ."
[222, pg. 45] is evidence of "bad faith"--his desire to escape moral

responsibility for himself. But, in the case of Jonathan, and The

Devil Tree, these same preoccupations seem to assume a positive meaning.

 

His desire to relate his past to Karen appears to be a move towards

113

mutual understanding and respect. He speculates that her acceptance

of his past, if proffered, would free him, allow him to express the many
aspects of his self, and thus provide a basis for love. The protagonist
of §£gp§_had chosen "sadism," before the novel began, as his mode of
relation to others Jonathan, although he toys with sadism throughout

his novel (his torment of Barbara, for example) has embarked on the
project of love. But finally, when this project has clearly failed,

he chooses hate (the precondition of sadism). With hate, Sartre says,
one chooses to destroy the other. Jonathan destroys the Howmets. In

this respect, then, there is a thematic agreement between The Devil Tree.

 

Steps, and The Painted Bird: perversity is the final desperate response

 

to the failure of the individual man and his society.

The novel seems to require a psychoanlytic interpretation, in
fact almost asks for it, especially in respect to Jonathan's preoccupa-
tion with his childhood. But this issue too is made ambiguous by the
question of Jonathan's reliability. Once again we are left with two
possibilities:‘ a) Kosinski intends that we understand psychoanalysis
(in this case the populariZed form) as another "myth," a system of
abstractions, which fails to comprehend the complexity of experience,
or b) he intends that we accept Jonathan's perceptions of himself
and his childhood as accurate and consistent with the other thematic
materials. Once again, these sections written in an objective, third-
person point-of-view seem to support the latter, but once again, we
cannot be sure.

But if we assume that the psychoanalytic material is accurate--that

is, that Kosinski intends that we accept it as accurate--a more important

114

question arises, and this involves the interrelationship of the thematic
materials in the novel: the myth of the American success story; the
psychological background; the contemporary scene; the inevitable (or so
it seems) failure of the project of loving.

The real significance of the American myth, as with any other,
is not that it accurately describes reality but that people believe
it does and attempt to fashion reality to correspond to it. To some
extent, their attempts will be successful. Thus, one may draw the
inference that the aberrations of the society in which Jonathan finds
himself--where illegal traffic in drugs imitates the methods of corporate
big business and the corporate big business imitates organized crime—-are
the ultimate result of a false myth or ideology. And therefore Jonathan's
project of discovering his self will be frustrated by a society that
offers him meaningless or corrupt models, institutions, etc. This

theme is similar to that of Being There and Steps. The Devil Tree,

 

 

however, investigates the source of the myth--the living models who

are Jonathan's parents. The weak point in this argument is the psycho-
analytic implications of Jonathan's childhood. Surely these would be
the same for anyone. Is Kosinski trying to lay the blame for all
neurosis at the door of corporate wealth as Freud did with civilization?
Or is Kosinski merely trying to draw the obvious point that for the
wealthy and powerful the elementary human passions are the same? In

either event, the relation of myth to neurosis in this case is unclear.

In The Devil Tree Kosinski comes as close as he has yet to

 

expressing the moral dilema that seems to underlie his fiction-—the

115

desire for self-realization against the impulse for the perverse. Even

so it is obscured by the overlay of psychological and mythical argu-
ments. Further, the reader who has followed Kosinski's work, even

perhaps to the extent of reading his essays, may be confused by Kosinski's
fictionalization, for the first time, of this dilemma. For example, if
that reader has read the essay on §E§E§' the idea of "transference"

will have negative connotations rather than the positive ones Kosinski
ascribes to the same idea when Jonathan considers it; similarly, the

same reader may identify the desire to realize the many potential selves
with the manipulative behavior of the protagonist of §Egp§,

Perhaps there is another explanation for this inconsistency of
meaning. Kosinski may see the acts and preoccupations of his protag-
onists as essentially unknowable in their fundamental motive. Therefore,
the act may assume different moral meanings and result in paradox.

But this is speculation. Even paradox must be visible.

Conclusion

The contemporary man desires the experience of his own being, his
"inner self", and a coherent and just world. The reality he perceives
frustrates that desire. For this reason, the perverse as a possible
ethical choice and course of action occupies a peculiar place in the
modern sensibility..

The choice of the perverse is made as a response to two aspects
of the world as modern man perceives it: 1) the failure of institu-
tions and society, all of those "formerly protective agencies" which are,
in the modern age, the sources of sin, i.e. destructive of self, and
2) the ontological condition on which human existence is based:
nothingness underlies being; consciousness comes out of nothing, returns
to nothing, and defines itself by that which it is not: that is, by
an act of negation.

In choosing the perverse, the man rejects the terms of existence
as they are understood in the modern period: that man lives in an
indifferent universe; that his being is founded on nothingness; that he
must, therefore, assume responsibility for his existence and his destiny.
The implications of a rejection of these terms, then, is a choice of
inauthenticity--in plain terms, living a lie. This is the ethical
meaning of "transference", the process by which-~as Kosinski explains
in A££_9£_Epp_§g2£f-the protagonist of§EEp§_attempts to rid himself
of the burden of his past by transferring it to the other, whether the
other is the woman of the interludes or, in fact, the reader: because

116

117

the past is part of one's facticity, it is part of one's existence. The
protagonist of §ppp§_also attempts to deny the terms of existence by
means of rigid control over himself and others, and by means of emotional
detachment--all of which are manifested in the language of the narration.
While rejecting the terms of existence (the ontological condition),
Kosinski's protagonists also mount an attack on those protective agencies,
social institutions and their symbols, which are perceived as destructive
of self: The protagonist of §Epp§ confronts the priest who has acquiesced
in the sexual exploitation of the demented woman and who can be con-
strued to represent a hypocritical church; he engages in petty acts
directed against the state bureaucracy--ruining an officious army

commander. The Boy of The Painted Bird engages in small acts of crime

 

and vandalism. Jonathan Whalen of The Devil Tree humiliates a local

 

official, and murders the Howmets, constituents of the power elite.

For the most part, however, Kosinski's protagonists attack
ordinary people, not powerful or representative of protective agencies.
The motive in these cases is not simply defense of the self against the
power of suffocating social institutions. It is rather a working out

of the motives assigned to the Boy of The Painted Bird by Kosinski in

 

Notes p£_the Author: ". . .he desires and thirsts to hate others for

 

all that had happened to him in this world." In the case of the Boy

this hatred is not ". . .directed at any single person or group; they

 

 

become attitudes. . .the basis for his behavior in all situations." It

 

is not important that the Boy necessarily know the victim of his revenge;
similarly it is perferable that the protagonist of Steps not know the

victim who will be the object of his manipulation.

118

The Boy adopts the morality of his persecutors, a psychological
solution described by Anna Freud in her study of defense mechanisms as
"introjection of aggression." For the Boy, then, and presumably
Kosinski's other perverse protagonists, pathology reinforces--or
underlies--the despair at the terms of existence and anger at the
failure of social institutions.

In addition to his impulse towards perversity, the Kosinski

protagonist desires self realization- The Boy of The Painted Bird

 

desires a just world, love, and a community in which he can experience
his "inner.se1f." The protagonist of §£gp§, Kosinski implies in

in discussing his protagonist's motives, Kosinski seems to justify
"transference" by arguing for personal liberation: ("It was a necessary
act because his past was crippling him, preventing him from acting

fully in the present.") "Chance", of 2222g_2pg£§, leaves his solipsistic
state in the garden with the expectation that others will ". . .open

him up and unfold him. . ." And in The Devil Tree Jonathan hopes to

 

realize his many selves, by transferring his past to Karen.

If we think of Kosinski's meaning of "self" and "inner life" as
synonymous with the humanistic values implied by "self-realization",
the desire for self and the choice of the perverse are anti-thetical.
Therefore we can understand Kosinski's novel as a dialectic between
the two, ending always in the frustration of the desire for self.

A moral dilemma underlies that dialectic, best described by Camus
in Ih§_§§§§lj when rebellion turns into nihilism, it negates its

original impulse--the affirmations of human dignity and freedom.

119

From Camus' position, it is still possible to choose rebellion
and reject nihilism, and with it, the perverse. But in Kosinski's
mythology, the historical moment has passed when one can make that
choice: "With the death of Man and the birth of collective and mechanized
society, faith loses its meaning. In the face of faith lost and in a
universe unmasked in its indifference,. . .the most meaningful and
fulfilling gesture is negative. . ."

For Kosinski, the choice of the perverse is a last resort, the
final defense of the self, ". . .a movement towards the solitude within
which the self can display its reality."

Still the desire for a different alternative lingers: The per-
verse reveals, in its emotional malaise, the despair and anger of the

man who chooses that doctrine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Selected Bibliography

I. Kosinski's Works

Novels

Being There. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.

 

The Devil Tree. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.

 

The Painted Bird. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

 

Step . New York: Random House, 1968.

NOn-Fiction

 

The Future 2§_Ours, Comrade. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1960.
[Published under pseudonym Joseph Novak.]

 

29_Third Path. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1962. [Published
under psuedonym Joseph Novak.]

 

Essays and Articles

 

The Art of the Self: Essays a Propos Steps. New York: Scientia-Factum,

_—_—_——

1968; also in Exile, vo1. 1, No. 1, Toronto: York University.

 

 

"Children of TV," in Destination Tomorrow, Jack Carpenter, ed.
Dubuque: wm. C. Brown, 1973, pp. 327-238.

 

"The Lone WOlf," American Scholar, (Autumn, 1972), pp. 513-514, 516-519.

 

Notes g§_the Author pp the Painted Bird. New York: Scientia-Factum,
1965; also in Exile, Vol. 1, No. 2. Toronto: York University.

 

 

"Packaged Passion, American Scholar, (Spring, 1973), pp. 193-204.

 

II. Biographical Sources and Interviews

Allen, Henry. Washington Post, August 30, 1971. [Interview].

 

Amory, Cleveland. "Trade Winds," Saturday Review, April 17, 1971,
pp. 16—17. [Interview].

 

120

121

Cahill, Daniel. "The Devil Tree: An Interview with Jerzy Kosinski,"
North American Review, 258 (Spring, 1973), pp. 56-57.

 

 

Contemporary Authors, Volumes 17/18. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research
Company.

 

Current Biography. March, 1974.

 

Plimpton, George A. and Landesman, Rocco. "The Art of Fiction XLVI:
Jerzy Kosinski," Paris Review, No. 54 (Summer, 1972). [Interview].

 

Publishers' Week_y, "Authors and Editors," Vol. 199, No. 17, (April
26, 1971). [Interview].

 

III. Articles and Criticism

Boyers, Robert. "Language and Reality in Kosinski's Steps," Centennial
Review, 16 (Winter, 1972), pp. 41-61.

 

Cahill,Daniel. "Jerzy Kosinski: Retreat from Violence," Twentieth
Centu£y_Literature, 18 (April, 1972), pp. 121-132.

 

Coale, Samuel. "The Quest for the Elusive Self: The Fiction of
Jerzy Kosinski," Critigue, 14 (1973), pp. 25-37.

"The Conscience of the Writer," Publishers' Weekly, March 22, 1971,
pp. 26-28.

 

von Daler, John Kent. "An Introduction to Jerzy Kosinski's Steps,"
Language apd Literature, Vol. 1, No. i, pp. 43-49.

 

Golden, Robert. "Violence and Art in Postwar American Literature:
A Study of O'Connor, Kosinski, Hawkes, and Pynchon," Dissertation
University of Rochester, 1972. Dissertation Abstracts Interna-
tional, 33 (1972), 3ll-A.

Harper, Howard M., Jr. ggntemporary_Literature, 12, (Spring, 1971),
pp. 213-214 [Critique of Steps].

 

Hutchinson, James. "Authentic Existence and the Puritan Ethic,"
University_9£_Denver Quarterly, 19, (Winter, 1973), pp. 106-114.

 

 

Lale, Meta and Williams, J. "The Narrator of The Painted Bird: A
Case Study," Benascence, 24 (Summer, 1972), pp. 198-206.

 

Richey, Clarence. "Being There and Dasein: A Note on the Philosophical
Presupposition Underlying the Novels of Jerzy Kosinski," Notes
22 Contemporary Literature, September, 1972, pp. l3-15.

 

 

Weales, Gerald. "Jerzy Kosinski: The Painted Bird and Other Disguises,'
Hollins Critic, 9 (October, 1972), pp. 1-12.

 

 

122

Weinstein, Sharon R. "Comedy and Nightmare: The Fiction of John
Hawkes, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Jerzy Kosinski, and Ralph Ellison."
Dissertation, University of Utah, 1971. Dissertation Abstracts
International, 32 (1971), 3336-A.

 

 

IV. Reviews of Kosinski's Novels

Reviews of The Painted Bird

 

Ascherson, Neal. "Chronicles of the Holocaust," New York Review 92_
Books, June 1, 1967, pp. 23-25.

 

Compton, Neil. "Drean1of Violence," Commentary, June 1966, pp. 92-95.

 

Davenport, Guy. National Review, February 8, 1966, pp. 119-120, 122-6.

 

Evanier, David. Commonweal, July 1, 1966, pp. 422-423.

 

Field, Andrew. "The Butcher's Helpers," Book Week, October 17, 1965,
pp. 2-3, 26.

Halley, Anne. "Poor Boy Spreads His Wings," Nation, November 19, 1965,
pp. 424-426.

Ivsky, Oleg. Library_Journa1, October 1, 1965, pp. 4109-4110.

 

Kluger, Richard. "A Scapegoat in Need," Harpers, October, 1965,
pp. 126, 128-130.

Nichols, Lewis. New York Times Book Review, October 31, 1965, p. 8.

 

Poore, Charles. "Things Like These Happen to People We Know," New
York Times Book Review, October 16, 1965, p. 25.

 

Schaap, Dick. "Stepmother Tongue," New York Herald Tribune Book Week,
November 14, 1965, p. 6.

 

Wiesel, Elie. "Everybody's Victim," New York Times Book Review,
October 31, 1965, pp. 5, 46.

 

Zeldis, Chayym. "Job, the Child," Jewish Frontier, March 6, 1967,
pp. 22-26.

 

Reviews of Step§_

 

"Album From Auschwitz," Times Literary Supplement, May 8, 1969, p. 481.

 

Bailey, Paul. "'Stuff' and Nonsense," London Magazine, May 1969, p. 112.

Baker, Roger. "Off-Beat Ideas," Books and Bookmen, July, 1969.

 

123

"Bird of Prey," Time, October 18, 1969, p. 114.

Blumenfeld, F. Yorick. "Dark Dreams," Newsweek, October 21, 1968,
pp. 104, 108.

Capitanchik, Maurice. "Private Lives," Spectator, May 9, 1968, p. 621.

Felheim, Marvin. "The Haunted Edges of Consciousness," Michigan
Daily, November 24, 1968, p. 6.

Fremont-Smith, Eliot. "Log of Atrocities," New York Times Book Review,
October 21, 1968, p. 45.

 

Furbank, P. N. "Fiction's Feelingless Man,” The Listener, May 8, 1969,
p. 655.

 

Glaser, Alice. "Making It," Book World, November 3, 1968, p. 8.

 

Hicks, Granville. "Sadism and Light Hearts," Saturday Review,
October 19, 1968, p. 29.

 

Howe, Irving. "From the Other Side of the Moon," Harper's, March
1969, pp. 102-105.

Jackson, Katherine G. Harper's,November, 1968, p. 160.

Jones, D. A. N. "Lean Creatures," New York Review 9£_Books, February
27, 1969, PP- 16-18.

 

Jordan, Cleve. New Statesman, May 9, 1969, p. 666.

 

Kauffmann, Stanley. "Out of the Fires," New Republic, October 26,
1968! pp. 22' 4]..

 

Kenner, Hugh. "Keys on a Ring," 23w York Times Book Review, October
20, 1968, p. 5.

 

McAleer, John. Best Sellers, November 1, 1968, p. 316.

 

Mudrick, Marvin. Hudson Review, 21 (Winter 1968/1969): P. 760.

 

Tucker, Martin. "A MoralistksJourney Into the Heart of Darkness,"
Commonweal, November 29, 1968, pp. 319-320.

 

West, Paul. "Portrait of a Man Mooning," Book World, November 3,
1968, p. 18.

 

Zeldis, Chayyem. Book Reporter, October 1968, pp. 7-8.

 

124

Reviews of Being There

 

Aldridge, John W. "The Fabrication of a Culture Hero," Saturday
Review, April 24, 1971, pp. 25-27.

Broyard, Anatole. "The High Price of Profundity," New York Times,
April 24, 1971, p. 45.

 

"Chance Encounters," Times Literary Supplement, June 11, 1971, p. 667.

 

Delaney, Paul. New York Times Book Review, April 25, 1971, pp. 7,
58-59.

 

Finn, James. "A Rich Parable," New Republic, June 26, 1971, pp. 32-33.

 

Gardner, Marilyn. "A Lifelong Nobody and a Would-Be Somebody,"
Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 1971, p. 11.

 

Glassgold, Peter. "Taking a Bad Chance," Nation, May 31, 1971, pp.
699-700.

Gosling, Ray. 22§_2223§, [London], May 20, 1971, p. 7.

Howe, Irving. Harper's, July 1971, p. 89.

Morgan, Edwin. "President Chance," Listener, June 10, 1971, p. 760.
Sheppard, R. Z. "Playing It By Eye," 2292, April 26, 1971, p. 73.

Tucker, Martin. Commonweal, May 7, 1971, pp. 221-223.

 

Updike, John. "Bombs Made Out of Leftovers," New Yorker, September
25, 1971, PP. 132-134.

 

Waugh, Auberonx. Spectator, May 22, 1971, p. 703.

Wblff, Geoffrey. "The Life of Chance," Newsweek, April 26, 1971,
pp. 94-95-8.

Reviews of The Devil Tree

 

Alter, Robert. New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1973, pp. 2-3.

 

Anderson, Elliot. Chicago Tribune Book World, March 4, 1973, p. 5.

 

Bell, Pearl K. New Leader, February 19, 1973, p. 17.

 

De Feo, Ronald. "Two Disappointments, One Failure," National Review,
March 16, 1973, pp. 322-323.

"The Devil Tree, by Jerzy Kosinski," Publishers' week2y, December 11,
1972, p. 33.

125

Edwards, Thomas. "Jonathan, Benny, and Solitude," New York Review 92
Books, March 22, 1973, p. 29.

 

Hislop, Alan. "Company Men," Saturdanyeview 92 the Arts, March 1973,
pp. '70-'71.

 

Howes, Victor. "Under the Microscope: A Novel in Bits and Pieces,"
Christian Science Monitor, April 18, 1973, p. 11.

 

Kauffmann, Stanley. "A Double View," World, February 27, 1973, pp. 42-43,
46.

Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "Bad By Design: Or Just Bad?", New
York Times, February 13, 1973, p. 39.

 

New Republic, March 10, 1973, pp. 33-34.

 

Prescott, Peter. "The Basis of Horror," Newsweek, February 19, 1973,
pp. 85-86.

Skow, John. "Strike It Rich," Time, February 19, 1973, p. 88.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX
, l
A Summary of Sartre s Ontology

For philosophic systems a theory of being (ontology) is usually
central. Ontology is the subject which Sartre addresses in his major
work, Beipg_and Nothingness. His method is phenomenological; that is,

he begins with an analysis of phenomenae, those objects or perceptions

 

which appear in our senses.

Like Descartes, Sartre begins his analysis with the initial
phenomenon which is consciousness itself, or the awareness of conscious-
ness. Descartes, wanting to find some absolute certainty from.which
he could build, subjected all beliefs to doubt. Everything, he found,
could indeed be doubted, except the fact of his doubt. But doubt,
argued Descarte, implied consciousness, and consciousness implied being,

"Cogito ergo sum" (2_think, therefore 2_a_). Sartre begins with the

 

assumption that consciousness must have an object, that is, it must

be conscious of something. Consciousness cannot be conscious of itself

because that would imply that consciousness is conscious of itself being
conscious of itself, and so on, leading to an infinite regression. His

analysis leads to a pge-reflective cggito; that is, the implicit con-

 

sciousness of being conscious of an object. That object is everything

which consciousness is not, which is that constituent.of being revealed

1Jean-Paul Sartre, Being 229 Nothingness, Ap_Essay pp Ehenomeno-
logical Ontology, translated by Hazel E. Barnes, Washington Square
Press edition, New York, New York, 1966. For convenience, all future
references will be included in the text and indicated by the title and
page number.

 

 

126

127

through the phenomenae. Consciousness, then, knows itself by an act

of negation: it says, in effect, I am that which is not the being
revealed through phenomenae. (Note that "negation" in this context
carried no moral connotation, but is purely a functional category.)

By the act of negation, consciousness (being-for-itself) separates
itself from all non-conscious being (being-in-itself) which is revealed
through phenomenae; thus, the "in-itself" is founded on the "for-itself."
And while the for-itself desires a union with the in-itself, such a
union is impossible, in principle, for if accomplished, the for-itself
would cease to be. That the for-itself comes into existence by an act
of negation is a fundamental idea for Sartre.

The for-itself exists in two modes: its "facticity" and its
"transcendence." Facticity signifies the connection between the for-
itself and the in-itself. First, as we have just seen, although the
for-itself is separate from the in-itself, the for-itself is founded
on the in-itself, and is thus dependent on it. In addition, the for-
itself as a subjective mind exists within a world; that is, it has a
physical base for its existence, and it is located in a body which is
an object in a world of objects and it appears in the world at a
certain time. Body, place and time constitute the given conditions
and limitations on the subjective consciousness. The temporal facticity
of the individual consits of his past and his present because these
assume an objective quality which corresponds to that of being-in-itself.

The for-itself also exists in the mode of transcendence. This

 

means that in certain ways consciousness is not limited by body, place
and time. Consciousness can project itself into the future and having

freedom of choice, can continually invent itself. Thus the transcendent

128

mode of consciousness extends beyond the temporal limitations of past
and present into the futre. Transcendence and facticity are the basis
for Sartre's idea of "bad faith," a concept which describes an ontologi-
cal condition but which has ethical implications. Ontologically "bad
faith" means a vacillation between these two modes, and a refusal to
recognize each for what it is or to synthesize them.2 Ethically, this
means an attempt by the indiviudal to deny or escape the condition of
responsible freedom which is implied by the conditions of his existence
within the world. Consider these examples:

The individual insists pp_his facticigy_alone: "I am only what I

 

 

am at the present moment because my condition is determined by my past,
by history, or by the situation into which I was born, and by the
circumstances of the present." While it is true that facticity imposes
certain limits, the individual possesses a wide array of choices within
those limits. So by present choices he can project himself into the
future. By insisting on his facticity and refusing to recognize his
transcendence, he excuses himself for responsibility for his fate.

The psychological equivalent of this attitude is resignation.

 

The individual insists pp_his transcedence alone: that is, he

 

denies a connection with the past or to the circumstances of the present:
"I am not who I was, and I am not who I am." This individual insists

on no limitations; he sees the future not in terms of a life-project

but as an empty void into which he can project himself as anything by
pure will. By adopting this attitude the individual escapes the respon-
siblity for making present choices (expressed in concrete acts) and for

2Sartre, pp, cit. This definition is paraphrased from the trans-
lators glossary.

129

living in a concrete particular world (facticity). The psychological
equivalent of this attitude is detachment and/or narcissism.

In either case, the individual is guilty of "bad faith." One
alternative to bad faith is "authenticity" in which the self coordinates
transcendence and facticity, thereby avoiding inner disintegration. By
recognizing these two modes for what they are, the self acknowledges
the real conditions on which its being is founded.

Sartre approaches this relationship of the self to other through
the traditional problem posed by "solipsism" which may be defined in
two ways: (1) the doctrine that the indiviudal mind (subject) is
unable to prove the existence or reality of other minds (subjects)
external to itself; or (2) the doctrine that nothing is real (exists)
but the subject, the individual mind. Put in the form of a question,
the problem posed by solipsism is this: How do we know that the other
exists as a subjective mind?

The existence of others as phenomenae is clearly established;
that is, they appear as figures in our senses, but pply as objects;
we have no way of knowing their subjectivity when we see them as
objects. And while we can conjecture from their appearance that they
possess a subjectivity like ours, this remains only conjecture, not
knowledge.

Sartre's solution to this problem lies once again in the analysis
of the consciousness of phenomenae. The for-itself experiences one
aspect of itself as an object--being-for-others. We experience being
for others as "affects" (emotional states); for example, when we
experience shame, anger, resentment, we do so as objects in another's

subjectivity.

130

The self, however, tries to escape becoming an object for the
other. In doing so, it engages in "hate" or "love"; that is, it
attempts to make an object of the other or become an object for the
other. Sartre uses the terms "sadism" and "masochism" to apply to
these general processes, as well as specific sexual instances.

The 22332_of love, however, is not masochism but the possession
of the liberty of the other by the other's own choice. In order to
achieve this, the self must make itself an object capable of standing
in place of the whole world for the other because in the normal exer-
cise of subjectivity, the other would choose a state of being-in-the-
world. The same is true of the other as subject; that is, he wishes
to possess the liberty of the other (the first subject) and therefore
he must make himself an object capable of standing in place of the
whole world. This mutual project is doomed from the beginning because
each must choose the other choosing, and so forth; this leads to an
infinite regression, and thus is impossible in principle.

Because of the failure of the project of love, the self may Ep£p_
apigg_into sadism or masochism. In masochism the self uses its liberty
to deprive itself of liberty, to become wholly an object for the other;
in sadism the self makes an object of the other, but in this case the

self possesses only the exterior (the body) of the other.

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