When I was an undergraduate in the 1980s, there was no getting away from the novels of Polish émigré and self-described Holocaust survivor Jerzy Kosinski. These contradictory facts and the enigmatic personality that spun them provides the narrative framework for an intriguing novelization of Kosinski’s life by biographer and novelist Jerome Charyn. Jerzy is divided into five vignettes, each seen from the point of view of a real or imagined character from Kosinski’s life. Charyn begins in the late 1960s, at the height of Kosinski’s fame, introducing readers to Ian Diggers, a fictional chauffeur for Peter Sellers. Diggers has been tasked to help Sellers land the role of the man-child Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Kosinski’s Being There.

Source: thestar June 02, 2017 10:30 UTC