Biography

Escaped from behind the Iron Curtain by convincing Soviet authorities that he had won a grant to study abroad from a fictitious American foundation, and produced "correspondence" which he had manufactured himself.

Once conducted an experiment in the difficulties new writers went through to get published: eight years after it won the National Book Award, he allowed another writer to change the title of his novel "Steps" and market it as his own. It was rejected by 13 agents and 14 publishers, including the one that had originally bought it.

For several decades, Kosinski was famous as a wit, a great raconteur, and a media celebrity. His first three novels were big hits. However, in June 22, 1982, "Jerzy Kosinski's Tainted Words," an article by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith in The Village Voice, accused Jerzy Kosinski of plagiarism and dishonesty. 'The Painted Bird' was widely considered to be autobiographical; the Voice showed that this shocking tale about a brutalized childhood during the Jewish Holocaust was not after all about Jerzy, who actually lived rather comfortably during the war years. 'Being There', which was adapted as a successful film, was shown to have been plagiarized from an earlier Polish novel with which Americans would be presumably unfamiliar. The Voice article also alleged that Kosinski relied upon editors to make exhaustive corrections and rewrites without giving them credit. Following this scandal, many friends supported Kosinski, but his reputation was irrevocably damaged. On May 3, 1991, Kosinski wrote a note that said: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call the time Eternity." With a fatal dose of barbiturates and his usual rum-and-Coke, he placed a plastic bag over his head and taped it shut around his neck, a method of suicide suggested by the Hemlock Society. He was found dead in the bathtub of his New York apartment.

Kosinski claimed that, on August 8, 1969, he was scheduled to fly from Paris to Los Angeles to join some friends for dinner at the Roman Polanski-Sharon Tate home in Hollywood. He said that his luggage had accidentally been sent to New York and the delays caused him to miss the party. His friend Voytek Frykowski, Sharon Tate and the rest of the guests were murdered that evening by members of the Manson Family. Kosinski later wrote about this apparent 'twist of fate' in his novel entitled "Blind Date". But Polanski later wrote in his autobiography that Kosinski lied and that nothing of this was true. Kosinski was probably only looking for media attention.

Once worked as the uniformed chauffeur of a wealthy Harlem jazz musician.