Passing By
Selected Essays, 1962–1991
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A collection of writings offers a revealing and provocative self-portrait of an author whose life was shrouded in enigma.
Jerzy Kosinski was one of the most important and original writers of his time. Passing By serves as his legacy. This collection of essays by the late author features pieces about polo and skiing, levitation, the streets of New York, present-day Poland, the Cannes film festival, celebrities, and more. The man who emerges here has a passion for sport, a quirky sense of fun, an idiosyncratic range of acquaintances stretching from Pope John Paul II to Warren Beatty, and an abiding love of secrets, conundrums, and fantasies. But first and foremost, as he demonstrates in major essays on his novels The Painted Bird and Steps, Kosinski is a powerful, incomparable literary artist.
"Kosinski's vibrant, sexy, questioning voice is fully present." —The Boston Globe
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to his widow, Polish emigre novelist Kosinski had been working on this collection of essays, lectures and fragments when he committed suicide in Manhattan in 1991. While the selections would be improved by contextualizing introductions, they portray a man who was impassioned about literature and who saw his role as confronting ``life's threatening encounters.'' He finds inspiration, he writes, from an intertwining of the Polish, Hasidic and American literary traditions, and considers America ``the last society which still modifies itself freely.'' He rails against the ``collectivism'' nourished by television and radio, and criticizes North American Jews for memorializing the Holocaust but not Jewish achievements. Other essays touch on his experiences learning polo, acting in the film Reds , living in New York City and visiting Poland in the late 1980s. Most interesting are his discussions of the original ideas behind The Painted Bird and the structure of Steps.
