leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (08/24/85)
THE PAINTED BIRD by Jerzy Kosinski
Bantam, 1965 (rev. 1978), $3.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: THE PAINTED BIRD is a harrowing experience. It
follows a Gypsy boy through his first-hand experiencing of much more cruelty
than most of us can imagine. It is a powerful novel, but the reader should
have some idea of what he is getting into before reading it. This is real-
life horror on a massive scale.
I have heard it claimed to be *the great mystery* of the Twentieth
Century: "How could so many basically good people--people from all
nationalities across Europe--participate in mass murder and true genocide?"
Nobody comes closer to answering that question than Jerzy Kosinski in THE
PAINTED BIRD. Kosinski paints a picture of peasant life in Eastern Europe
in which the people could have slipped into the Holocaust without ever
noticing the difference. For these ignorant and superstitious people, the
Holocaust did not start in this century, but was a continuation of one long
Holocaust that had been going on since the beginning of time against Gypsies
and Jews, against people with Black hair, against unfaithful wives, against
birds and horses and dogs. Among most of civilization, the book seems to
say, callousness and cruelty are part of the daily way of life and its
victims can be just about anyone, as close as a husband or wife or as
distant as an insect. In the view of this novel, we sit here on an island
of relative--only relative--civilization looking out on an ocean of barbaric
history. Our eye fastens on one Holocaust and we ask ourselves, where did
that barbarity comes from? In fact, it is just one incident in centuries of
barbaric cruelty.
The title of THE PAINTED BIRD comes from the sport of one of the
characters in the book. He would catch a blackbird and paint the wings
blue, the head red, the chest green. Then he would release it. The bird
would try to rejoin the flock, but they would see the paint, the superficial
differences, and would peck the bird to death. It is a vicious and cruel
sport and as such it is just one more vicious and cruel aspect of peasant
life and Kosinski's novel shows us dozens. But it is the central metaphor
of the book because one can take it a step further and ask, why does it even
work? The painted bird is merely returning to the same flock it left, birds
it has flown with for months. Even birds will take any superficial excuse
to pick out one of their numbers and subject it to pain and death.
So how did the Holocaust happen? Was it simply one German political
party which found a little co-operation among a handful of peasants while
the vast majority remained ignorant or looked on in horror? If that is your
view of history, it is indeed a mystery how the Holocaust took place. But
that isn't how it happened. The Holocaust could not have happened without
releasing the ignorant hatred and cruelty of a lot of common people that
today it is easier to think of as just plain good folk. It was not a
difficult task for the Nazis to point out some "painted birds" to the common
folk and let in-bred ignorance and hatred take its course. That has to be
the way it was done by the Nazis and the Stalinists and the Maoists and the
Khmer Rouge--there have been many Holocausts in the last fifty years alone.
What we call "the Holocaust" was just the one closest to the Western news
and information sources.
THE PAINTED BIRD follows one Gypsy boy in an odyssey around Eastern
Europe during World War II. But much of the inhumanity the boy sees has
little or nothing to do with the fact that a war is going on. Most of what
he sees could have happened any time since the Middle Ages. Scenes of
children torturing animals for fun or grown men standing by and watching
rape and murder could and do take place today in our own country. Kosinski
does not try to explain why there is the callousness and cruelty the boy
observes and often suffers. In most cases it makes little more sense than
the peasants hating the boy out of fear that his black hair will attract
lightning. But we do see that it feeds upon itself. At the beginning of
the book the boy is purely a victim. By the end of the book he himself is
involved in senseless murders. He has evolved from victim into victimizer.
THE PAINTED BIRD is as unpleasant as any novel you are likely to find.
A case might be made that it is unrealistic to see all the gruesome
incidents that are described in this story. Still, it is a deeply affecting
book. It says a lot about humanity most of us would rather not think about.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeperkilian@pbsvax.DEC (Michael Kilian/DTN: 225-6017/MS: HLO2-3/M08) (08/28/85)
It's been a while since I read _The Painted Bird_ by Jerzy Kosinski,
yet the book still remains vivid in my mind. It is by far the most violent
book I have ever read. Not only are the acts of violence frequent, but they
seem to very "imaginative" (for lack of a better word). We are not talking
about simple killings by guns or war, but the grotesque tortures
adolescents sometimes think about. Many scenes seem to be designed to just
elicit a groan or wince.
The question I have is whether all of this violence really contributes
to a meaningful development of the theme. Certainly the Holocaust was horrible
and grotesque, and certainly _The Painted Bird_ addresses man's inhumanity
to man, but how does the endless string of horror address the issue of why
this happens?
The superficial answer from the book is that prejudice and superstition
are the large motivating force. Because the Gypsy Boy is different,
he is the butt of many attacks. Yes, he is the painted bird, yet isn't that
quite obvious and can't that be inferred from a few acts of violence? Isn't
there more to be explored than how man is inhumane to man and shouldn't there
be more emphasis on why?
As I remarked, it has been a while since I read the book. I seem to remember
though that the encounters the boy has on his travels are relatively short.
There is not a lot of development of any of the characters, and I would tend
to say that even the boy is not developed that well. He is much like a voyeur
on the violence, often the victim, sometimes the participant. Yet, I remember
the violence, not the boy, not his character. I remember the bird and how
the boy is like the bird, I don't remember how much I liked or sympathized
with the boy.
Maybe the Gypsy Boy is supposed to represent the nameless many of the
Holocaust. Maybe he represents the anonymity of the victims of the Holocaust,
the burned in numbers, the coercion of Jews from vital people to nameless,
often hopeless, numbers. Unfortunately, I feel that the continuous violence,
the never letting up, doesn't let me ponder that till I put the book away
for some time. The violence is too pervasive, it gets in the way of thinking
of the victims.
_The Painted Bird_ may be a powerful statement on the Holocaust to some
people. To me, it is too vivid in its depiction of hate and destruction;
the book is not long enough to have enough character development between
the violence. To some, it may say that we are all painted birds in some respect
and the world is a brutish place. Have we really expanded our way of thinking
by this reductionist statement?
-- Mike Kilianleeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (09/11/85)
>The question I have is whether all of this violence really >contributes to a meaningful development of the theme. >Certainly the Holocaust was horrible and grotesque, and >certainly _The Painted Bird_ addresses man's inhumanity to >man, but how does the endless string of horror address the >issue of why this happens? I think if you think back on the book and separate the atrocities that were as a result of the Holocaust with those that could have happened in the 19th century, for example, you will discover that very little of the book concerns itself with the Holocaust. These are timeless horrors. The book for me goes a long way to explain the Holocaust as being an organization of the mindless violence that has gone on for centuries. The hatred that startled the world when it was revealed had always been around, it just had not been focused on such a small point. It is like on a warm day the sun may not really feel so hot, but if it is fucused with a magnifying glass it will burn paper. The magnifying glass is not adding any energy to the system, it is just taking the energy that is around and directing it against a small area. If you read Tuchman's A DISTANT MIRROR you can see that there was a great deal of mindless hatred and violence in Europe even in plague-ravaged Europe. There were small holocausts even then. Europe had been ripe for a big holocaust even then. THE PAINTED BIRD denies the old self-congradulatory idea that people are basically good. People are basically people and as such can be violent and stupid and above all cruel. As long as someone keeps thinking that people are basically good, the Holocaust will remain a mystery and will eventually be denied. > >The superficial answer from the book is that prejudice and >superstition are the large motivating force. Because the >Gypsy Boy is different, he is the butt of many attacks. >Yes, he is the painted bird, yet isn't that quite obvious >and can't that be inferred from a few acts of violence? A few acts might be coincidence. Kozinsky wanted to show the universality of the cruelty. >Isn't there more to be explored than how man is inhumane to >man and shouldn't there be more emphasis on why? When trying to understand a phenomenon the first step is to establish it exists -- in its full magnitude. Many people cannot accept that it exists. >Maybe the Gypsy Boy is supposed to represent the nameless >many of the Holocaust. You keep looking at the Holocaust as an isolated thing. He represents the victims of cruelty through history. Or more accurately, he is an example. >To some, it may say that we are all painted birds >in some respect and the world is a brutish place. Have we >really expanded our way of thinking by this reductionist >statement? If we come to understand mankind's cruelty a little better, yes. Mark Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper