34 LitSpit: Cockpit

Cockpit

by Jerzy Kosinski

This is LitSpit. It's about books. I read 'em. I write about 'em. Here we go.

Jerzy Kosinski was an author who never pulled his punches. He had a deliberate, graceful prose, yet punctuating this grace, he aggressively strikes his readers with powerful, confrontational, imagery. Having already read The Painted Bird, I figured this book would be an equally excellent read. It was. Just not in the way I expected.

Cockpit tells the story of a rogue secret agent known as Tarden, who uses his intelligence to exact his every sociopathic whim. Like The Painted Bird, this novel is a first person account. The narrative is shattered into a series of vignettes in Tarden's life. I won't spoil any of the gruesome and horrifying moments for you. Especially not the significance of the title. (whoa. dude.) I will tell you that this is a story told from the perspective of a mind much more diabolical than any other I have ever read about. An excellent study in villainy.

At times, I would have to to put this book down because it was so graphically violent and misogynistic. Psychologically, it is harder on the reader than any other psych-horror literature I've ever read. The Tesseract, American Psycho, The Wasp Factory.  None of the characters in these books can hold a candle to Tarden in their devious monstrosity. (Frank Cauldhame came close.) It is an exhausting book. Its absolution comes from its literary brilliance. It is so well written, I finished it in a few days. Pretty fast for a non-skimmer like me. Kosinski's great gift was his ability to take these often detestable and gruesome characters and press the reader not to care, but to ponder what happens to them. Not through compassion or empathy, but through the exploitation of our natural morbid curiosity.

Kosinski was a tormented soul. He was a very controversial figure, particularly in the literary world. Especially concerning The Painted Bird, which he was accused of plagiarizing in 1982. Another writer had come forward, claiming to have written it. No solid proof of this was ever uncovered. The Painted Bird was also banned in Poland until 1989. This was because of its anti-communist themes and because of Polish anti-semitism. This of course was the order of the day in Poland, in the late 1960s, when the novel was published. He strangely escaped being murdered by the Mansons at Polanski's house due to his luggage being lost by an airline. The reaper comes for us all, in one way or another. In the end, it seems it was his sensitivity to his accusers that brought him to the banks of the Styx. After almost a decade of obscurity, he died by suicide in 1991.

-2013 Wielgorecki