Being There

Born on June 14, 1933, of Mieczyslaw and Elzbieta Kosinski in Lodz, Poland, Jerzy Kosinski came to the United States in 1957. He was naturalized in 1965. Kosinski obtained MA degrees in social sciences and history from the University of Lodz, and as a Ford Foundation Fellow completed his postgraduate studies in sociology at both the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and Columbia University in New York. Kosinski wrote The Future Is Ours, Comrade (1960) and No Third Path (1962), both collections of essays he published under the pen name of Joseph Novak. He is the author of the novels The Painted Bird (1965), Steps (1968), Being There (1971), The Devil Tree (first edition 1973, revised in 1981), Cockpit (1975), Blind Date (1977), Passion Play (1979), Pinball (1982), and The Hermit of 69th Street (1988). As a Guggenheim Fellow, Kosinski studied at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University; subsequently he taught American prose at Princeton and Yale universities. He then served the maximum two terms as president of the American Center of PEN, the international association of writers and editors. He was also a Fellow of Timothy Dwight College at Yale University. Kosinski founded and served as president of the Jewish Presence Foundation, based in New York. He won the National Book Award for Steps, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in literature, best Screenplay of the Year Award for Being There from both the Writers Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the B'rith Shalom Humanitarian Freedom Award, the Polonia Media Award, the American Civil Liberties Union First Amendment Award and International House Harry Edmonds Life Achievement Award. Kosinski was a recipient of honorary PhDs in Hebrew letters from Spertus College of Judaica and in humane letters from both Albion College, Michigan (1988) and Potsdam College of New York State University (1989). An adept of photographic art, with one-man exhibitions to his credit in Warsaw's State Crooked Circle Gallery (1957), André Zarre Gallery in New York (1988), and in the Spertus College of Judaica in Chicago (1992), Mr. Kosinski was also an avid polo player and skier. In his film-acting debut in Warren Beatty's Reds, he portrayed Grigori Zinoviev, the Russian revolutionary leader. Mr. Kosinski died in New York on May 3, 1991.