More Lies About Jerzy

<p>   “Long before James Frey ticked off Oprah Jerzy Kosinski excited controversy with The Painted Bird a novel that Kosinski slyly promoted as an autobiographical account of his own childhood in Poland during its occupation by Nazi Germany. When it was alleged that his `personal’ experience was largely fabricated Kosinski’s career was forever tarnished. Accusations of plagiarism further plagued Kosinski who committed suicide in 1991. <br />   Was Kosinski liar or embellisher literary thief or literary genius? The continuing debate fuels Davey Holmes’ MORE LIES ABOUT JERZY.<br />   …Holmes’ deft drama is a fictionalized look at a man who falls from grace for fictionalizing his own life—a neat meta-theatrical exercise that examines the sometimes cannibalistic nature of creativity.<br />   Although Holmes has changed the characters’ names the play roughly follows the arc of Kosinski’s pyrotechnical rise and sputtering fall. Holmes’ thinly-veiled stand-in for Kosinski Jerzy Lesnewski is a newly famous author and voracious womanizer a regular on the talk show circuit as well as in New York’s flourishing sex clubs circa the early 1970s. When a formerly supportive journalist exposes inconsistencies in Jerzy’s work the vultures circle.”<br />F Kathleen Foley Los Angeles Times</p>