The Painted Bird

Rating:
Summary: A Tarantino movie of a book, of interest to psychiatrists
Review: Quite honestly, after the first fifty pages one gets an impression of reading an unknown piece by De Sade; it's absolutely clear that even though the book is written as a memoir, the events there are pure invention -- a flood of disturbed, psychotic fantasy, an orgy of mass rape, mutilation, and murder, poking out of eyes, skinning live animals. All that would still be OK: there are all kinds of artistic expression; De Sade, too, is still in print.

But unfortunately, the book's blood-drenched, extremely -- and gratuitously -- violent action is set in a relatively recent historical context (WWII, somewhere in the occupied by Germans Eastern Europe) and thus this novel is bound to be interpreted not a grotesque but abstract, surreal pornographic phantasmagoria japanese-animation-style, but as an unemotionally factual historical testimony; as such the book is simply offensive. It seems to me that WWII even as it was historically, had been sufficiently painful and, most importantly, is still close enough to us to select it as a backdrop for a piece of surrealistic pornography. It is abominably disrespectful towards millions of real victims of these horrifying times, many of whom are still living. For goodness sakes, if not good taste, at least have some consideration! I was disgusted (and that doesn't happen very frequently: I read a lot and I'm fairly omnivorous.)

Btw, if the above is not enough, The Painted Bird is also exceptionally badly written; I can't fathom how it deserved the literary prize that it was awarded.

Rating:
Summary: Truly unforgettable
Review: The word "unforgettable" is one that has been overused to the point where it has become not only a cliche, but inherently hyperbolic. That said, here we have a book that is truly unforgettable. Jerzy Kosinski's semi-autobiographical novel is one of the greatest pieces of literature, and there were many, that sprang from WWII. The Jewish experience of that war has been well-documented, in various forms and at various levels of quality, in both literature and film. The Painted Bird, however, gives us a much different perspective on the tragedy: there are no concentration camp scenes with innocent Jewish children being boiled in vats and baked in ovens, no grueling battle scenes viewed from the front, no children hiding out in concealed rooms. Here we see the tragedy unfold from the eyes of a young boy, a vagabond, who wanders from village to village, seeking shelter and food. Sometimes he is cared for and educated; most of the time, he is subjected to senseless violence and treachery. Here we see how the terrible war affected the common peasants in their everyday lives -- what it was like to try and live in the middle of a war-torn landscape. The absence of peace, a steady ruler, stabilization, not to mention the perpetual presence of violence and death, coalesced into a hellish combination, and the human race sank to a level not fit even for the most primitive beasts. This book truly does not turn a blind eye to human nature. In this book, we see just how cruel, ignorant, sadistic, thoughtless, and disgustingly depraved people can be. The boy in the story has almost every imaginable thing happen to him -- and the reader is constantly aware, while reading the book, that, after all, all of these things are happening to an innocent young boy! The violence is constant, the ignorance and cruelty ever-present, and sex and other such matters are never too far away. I have read many risque books that have been banned at one time or another, and nothing comes close to this. If it had not been for the landmark ruling the decade before this book was published on Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, which outlawed governmental censorship of literature, this book certainly would not have been published in the United States. That said, those who condemn the book as senselessly violent and/or pornographic are missing the point. This book was clearly not written to entertain; the sex scenes -- if, indeed, they can be called that -- were clearly not meant to be titillating. What one needs to keep in mind, hard as it is to do, is that all of the things which take place in this book ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Now, this novel is only semi-autobiographical, and it is a work of fiction. The issue of which events actually happened to Kosinski and which he took from the lives of other people is totally beside the point: the bottom line is that, hard as it may be to believe, actual people went through all of the events depicted in this book -- and not just a few people, but thousands, millions. The Painted Bird shows us just how low the human race can sink; anyone who thinks that the age of barbarism and savagery has passed us by is sadly and unfortunately mistaken. The book is, in its way, very inspiring: it shows what it is possible for a human being to go through... the protagonist as a modern-day Job. It not only shows us the true breadth of the human experience, but also the deep failings of human nature: it opens our eyes to how truly awful life is for some people. Kosinski's style is very spare and sparse; he cuts straight to the bone -- as does the book. The Painted Bird, a masterpiece of modern literature, is a book that you will truly never forget.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting Look At WW II From A Child's View
Review: This is a spellbinding, yet agonizing portrayal of survival by a child in Nazi-occupied Poland. The unnamed protagonist is separated from his parents at the onset of the war, raised briefly by a sympathetic caretaker in the countryside. Somehow the child endures the hostility and brutal treatment meted out to him by superstitious peasants. He witnesses countless episodes of beatings, murder and sex. Eventually he finds salvation in the form of Soviet Russian troops displaying the humanity that seems absent in most of the peasants encountered by the child. Told in poetic, often lyrical, prose, "The Painted Bird" is regarded by many as Jerzy Kosinski's finest novel, and among the best to recount the horrors of World War II. This was a very painful book to read anew, yet one I couldn't put down, and compelled to read as quickly as possible to a surprising, yet satisfying, conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: An incredible story
Review: The first time I read this book was as a summer assignment for a High School honors class. It was either this or Agony and the Ecstasy that I wanted, and this was shorter, so I picked this one. No one else did out of the hundreds of other titles they could choose. I read The Painted Bird from start to finish, apalled yet enthralled by all this young boy went through. You are pulled into this morbid odyssey and share his travels with him. You experience the depravity and debauchery of humanity's darker side that cannot be ignored nor disproved. We all know it's there. This book does not allow us to hide from this theme, nor spares us from it by the tale's end. The aftermath is at an orphanage, a microcosm of children no longer innocent after witnessing the atrocities of adults, suddenly placed into an ordered society and expected to assume a happy-go-lucky niche again. It doesn't happen, it won't happen, and though by the tale's end, our protagonist seems to have a hopeful future, his past has been forever sullied with the smarmy truth that will always cast a dark shadow on all of his future, no matter how bright it may shine at times.

Anybody who likes to read should pick up this book and experience this. It is seven years later, and I have since bought the book. It has inspired me in my own writing style. This is a true literary gem, a classic beauty despite the brutality it depicts.

Rating:
Summary: When people say 'peasant mentality'....
Review: I read this powerful book as a young man and vividly recall
its stark imagery of the cruel and mindless (sometimes
gleeful) violence of rural Eastern Europe. It helped me
gain a sense of what people mean when they talk about
backwards areas.

Rating:
Summary: Not a weekend read
Review: What makes this book so brilliant is the protagonist, an adolescent viewing his world through the pure, neutral eyes of childhood. Through him, the reader is forced to confront the nature of innocence, whether or not it even exists. The child becomes a microcosm for a world without order or structure, a place where laws are arbitrary and, often, brutally barbaric.

That being said, this is not a casual read. By buying, and subsequently, reading this book, you will be forced to confront issues and ideas that you might not want to deal with.

While this book may or may not be for you, do not deny its brilliance. No book has ever moved or shaken me the way this novel has.

Rating:
Summary: Bleak, harrowing
Review: Excellently written, evocative and compelling, this book is also fairly unique in its ability to capture and convey the absolute 7th ring of hell very convincingly, without allowing you to look away. A masterpiece, possibly the seminal work of holocaust literature. In later life Kosinsky was accused of being a fraud (the book obviously is not literally autobiographical) and he was described as ungrateful by the Polish villagers who are portrayed in the book so negatively. The 1st accusation was obviously ridiculously naive and rooted in jealous. The 2nd accusation is hilariously ironic. Read the book, you won't forget it.

Rating:
Summary: "I knew that the ghost might never leave me..."
Review: This book is necessary reading for anyone who is literate. An exploration into the very depths of human depravity and an apt dissection of how war sheds all masks. Haunting, revolting, and most definitely life changing this tale of a prepubescent boy abandoned by war will strip the scales from any reader's eyes.

Kosinski takes a bleak situation and denies hope at every turn dragging his young protagonist again and again through the razor studded halls of hell. The sorrow and horror are tangible as bullets, leaving the reader intellectually shellshocked. Atrocities abound, all too recognizably human.

After reading The Painted Bird it immediately went on my list of top 20 books. For any who read this the outcome will always be the same: YOU WILL HATE WAR! Even more than you should now.

"I knew that the ghost might never leave me, that it might follow me, haunt me at night, seep sickness into my veins and madness into my brain."

Rating:
Summary: not literature
Review: There is no excuse for this book, which is basically a litany of every imaginary atrocity that man could possibly inflict on another man.

Rating:
Summary: I was surprised
Review: I have read much about the book before i've read it myself. Finally i got it and read in one day. And i was surprised - maybe the Polish version was different somehow from English one? First of all, in book i've read, the child is not Gypsy or Jewish. The peasants consider it Gypsy or Jewish, but we don't know anything about it, in fact, we can be quite sure (from the poems it knows) that it is child from Polish intelligentsia.

I've read this is anti-Polish book. It is not.

Peasants are not Poles (Just see the names: Makar, Anton, Olga - these are not Polish names). They are peasants from, i think, somewhere from Polesie considering description of landscape. They are not Catholic, they are both Catholic and Orthodox.

It is too cruel, i was tired by the end of the book by endless horrors, but it does show how evil can be as virus, as young kid became as cruel as those who were bullying it before.

Anyway, i just couldn't stop reading it - even when shrugging sometimes with description of Germans or Russians (only positive characters in the book). Just can't understand other people reviews. I guess they read different book.