Book review: Good night Dżerzi by Janusz Głowacki

I've written about playwright and author Janusz Głowacki before having read his autobiography, Z głowy (2004). Good night Dżerzi (2010) is a more serious work, based on the life of Jerzy Kosiński, the Polish-American novelist. The book's structure is exceptionally interesting, being a seamless blend of autobiography, biography and fiction. The trouble is with spotting where one genre ends and another begins.

For those who've come to the book familiar with the jocular tone of Z głowy, Good night Dżerzi opens as autobiography. Janusz Głowacki (Dżanus) is in New York. He's talking to a pair of Broadway producers about writing a play about the life of Jerzy Kosiński, who had committed suicide in 1991. Kosiński had achieving critical and popular acclaim with his books Painted Bird and Being There, the latter becoming an Oscar-winning film starring Peter Sellers. The former was about a boy wandering around wartime Poland, subjected to horrendous cruelties by Polish peasants. Kosiński left America thinking that Painted Bird was autobiographical; in fact he and his family were saved from the Holocaust by a Polish family.

Good night Dżerzi takes us into Kosiński's world. To what extent is it based on fact (Głowacki knew Kosiński well from his sojourn in New York in the early 1980s), and to what extent is it fiction, we can only speculate. For example, there's a scene in which Kosiński is asked to present awards at an Oscar ceremony. The producer's name is invented, as is probably much of the dialogue; but the event did happen. (Click here to see Kosiński at the 1982 Oscars.) What we don't know is how much of Głowacki's dialogue was based on conversations he may have had on the subject with Kosiński, and how much Głowacki just made up.

But hey, it's a novel, so Głowacki can be creative... But to what extent? The drifting between genres is unsettling at first, but after a while, begins to intrigue. The book follows Kosiński's fall from grace, encircled by a growing number of critics who are accusing him of plagiarism, of passing off fiction as autobiography, of manipulating editors and translators for his greater glory, and  - the central thread of the novel - his callous exploitation of the women in his life.

The two Broadway producers we meet in the novel's opening have been approached by the husband of a woman that Kosiński has seduced. He is a wealthy German businessman and wants the story of the (now dead) Kosiński turned into a play. And Głowacki is the man to write it, being a) a playwright, b) a fellow-Pole and c) someone who knew Kosiński well.

Głowacki's novel about a play (to be turned into a film) he's writing about the life of a well-known author is set largely in New York City, largely among it's Russian immigrant community (the German's wife is Russian). This allows for many scenes, some with Kosiński, some with Głowacki, getting very drunk and in the depths of their drunkenness unearthing the deepest secrets of the creative soul.

Russia intrudes heavily in this book. Masha, the wife (and Kosiński's lover) is from Russia and through her we are shown a debased nation lacking in morality, drunken, debauched, lacking human values. The virus spreads with its emigrants to New York, its Little Russia on the Atlantic coast battered by storms, waves, high winds and pelting rain.

An ingenious book that questions the price that creative artists pay for achieving and clinging on to fame, Good night, Dżerzi would work well in English. The book was well received and well read in Poland; it could do well outside Poland too.

If I were to have any reservations about the book, it is with its ending; it lacks circularity; we don't return to the original premise and our two Broadway producers; it drifts away and ends somewhere else.

This time last year:
More serious setbacks on Second Metro line construction

This time three years ago:
Leonard Cohen in Katowice

This time five years ago:
The short-term future of suburban development (How right I was!)

Quiet afternoon in the Bazaar

Fourteen years in Warsaw and I've yet to have checked out this legendary place. Bazar Różyckiego in Praga, just off ul. Targowa (which regular readers will remember is named after the Russian General Targov). The bazaar's heyday was in communist days, when it was one of the only places in Poland where one could obtain highly sought-after items such as blue jeans, t-shirts, fashionable footwear, and other items of clothing that would distinguish Warsaw's hipper citizens (bikiniarze) from the drab proletariat. The klimaty of the place are referred to in Leopold Tyrmand's Zły, Dziennik 1954 r., and Janusz Głowacki's Z głowy.

The bazaar had a very important place in the life of the capital in communist days. Not just for consumers, starved of anything fashionable, colourful or distinguishing. But for the sellers. Many were, like my family in Warsaw, people with connections in the West. My parents would regularly send parcels to their families in Poland; parcels containing (typically) clothes from Marks & Spencer (the well regarded St Michael's brand in those days). Well do I remember driving with my parents and my brother after Polish Saturday school in Chiswick to a small shop on the Fulham Palace Road from where my parents would send knitwear wrapped in brown paper to Warsaw and to Bystrzyca Kłodzka.

Today, the bazaar's competition - regular high street stores and shopping malls like Centrum Handlowe Warszawa Wileńska - has made it a shadow of its former self (much like the dear old Giełda fotograficzna camera fair that takes place at Stodoła each Sunday)

The young men and women that were once duckin' an' divin', bobbin' an' weavin' to turn an honest zloty in Gierek's days are now in their advanced middle age, selling dresses for weddings and first holy communions; little three-piece suits for four year-old boys and footwear for the middle aged - but at least its all stuff that's not mainstream, not brand-name regular shopping mall fashion.

But does Warsaw want it? Like the camera fair, the bazaars are in decline, being killed off very slowly by the relentless march of globalised retail. Footfall here is a tiny fraction of what I witnessed just minutes later at Wileńska.

So visit it while you can, a legendary place in Warsaw's history, it's been around for 180 years; it's witnessed uprisings and invasions, it's kept Varsovians supplied with contraband goods during the hard times, it was a free market that survived the planned economy.

And linguistic conundrum of the day: If 'How dare you ...!' in English is Jak śmiesz...!, what's 'I dare you to...' in Polish?

This time last year:
Distracted by the Cross of Smolensk (warning: Smolensk-related content)

Literary flavours of PRL

I'm currently reading (and greatly enjoying) Z Głowy by Janusz Głowacki, a Polish author, playwright and screenwriter; a very funny and insight-laden book. Below: a photo of Głowacki (circa 1985; Miami Vice style-white jacket with rolled-up sleeves over T-shirt), currently on display on Al. Ujazdowski, part of an exhibition of portraits of Poles who became famous in America.


I find Głowacki at his best describing the middle period the the communist years, from the mid-60s to the late 70s. As well as the acerbic observations into everyday life of that period, Głowacki's autobiography gives some poignant insights about the moral decisions made by creative people when facing the all-powerful censorship apparatus of the totalitarian state.

The Regime needed talented writers yet talented writers were well aware of the brutal absurdity of the Regime. But talented writers needed the Regime to get to reach their audience, so an uncomfortable accommodation was reached, with authors' self-censorship balancing the censor's judicious application of a blind eye. Głowacki describes many encounters with the censor (and other filters along the way - editors, publishers, directors). Criticism of the system had to be allowed - but only that criticism which the system deemed to be Constructive.

"In [communist] Polish theatre, there was never any good Comedy. Things that you were allowed to laugh at, no one found funny. Things that did make people laugh would never get past the censor. It was even worse with Tragedy."

Some writers, editors, publishers and directors were more pliant vis-a-vis the Regime; the more unruly ones were pushed to the far fringes and would often leave Poland to write abroad. Głowacki found himself in London when Martial Law befell Poland, and then moved to New York where he lived and worked until the fall of communism.

Głowacki describes the writer's block he experienced in New York City when, free of the censor, he could write anything he wanted. At first, he found he couldn't. His mind had been so conditioned to finding ways of smuggling messages around the censor. Freedom, when first sampled, was a heady wine.

His portrayal of life in New York for Polish immigrants was uncompromising. Their families back home imagined them to be living the lives of millionaires, while the reality was holding down two poorly-paid jobs and sleeping on a mattress in a tiny room in a cockroach-infested flat in a bad part of town. And yet the family in Poland would demand money; the immigrant would send it to show how successful he or she was, having made it in the American Dream. Greenpoint, the Polish district of New York is shown as a hopeless place.

The chronology of the narrative switches from 1980s USA to his childhood; as a six year-old he was caught up in the Warsaw Uprising; cutting backwards and forwards to ensure that contrasts within the rich life he led are prominently exhibited. But he is in his element among the low-life and literary elite in various Warsaw bars and restaurants; the ever-present informants, children of top politicians and semi-legal entrepreneurs, secret policemen, ladies of easy virtue and clients of the Regime. Spicy anecdote follows spicy anecdote (many of which have had the effect of making me laugh out loud on buses and trains). He portrays himself as a hard-drinking Jack-the-Lad type, equally at home with famous writers and actors as with dodgy types from Bazar Różyckiego.

Leopold Tyrmand, whose Dziennik 1954 r. (Diary for 1954) and Zły I read, also captures those same flavours of PRL-era seedy night-life centred on bars and restaurants. The drink of choice here is usually the seta (augmentative form of setka, 100g of vodka - a quadruple measure by UK pub standards). If this is not enough, there's the lorneta (lorgnette), consisting of a pair of sety, together looking like opera glasses. And for a bigger session, a połówka (half), being a half-litre bottle of vodka, typically to share with some down-on-his-luck literary type. And when Głowacki's down on his luck, an author whose star is in the ascendant will no doubt get him drunk. He describes in great details the dives and drinking-holes where the once-famous or soon-to-be-famous borrowed money off him or bought him beers.

To give you a flavour of his style, I've translated a paragraph, at random (the current position of my bookmark...)

"From my student days I'd been trying to wangle [kombinować] a way out of my parents' flat on ul. Bednarska. I wanted my own flat, but never had the money to buy one. I belonged to a housing cooperative and waited, as did everyone, for decades. I submitted numerous applications. Once, attempting to gain the sympathy of the city authorities, I wrote that I live with an alcoholic mother and a mentally-ill father. My mother was indignant, because she couldn't stand alcoholics, and ordered me to change it so that she was mentally ill, and my father the alcoholic. When a committee came round, my mother played the part well. "It's a scandal," she ranted, "that a young writer should not have a flat of his own!", so they believed that she was mad. But my father, for whom I bought a half-litre of Żytnia vodka, even drank some, but then refused to lie on the floor singing. And so the processing of my application for a flat of my own was not speeded up."

If I have one serious criticism of Głowacki's autobiography, it is that there's almost no discussion of the creative process; it's a though one night he gets very, very drunk with assorted ne'er-do-wells in a dodgy dive on the Lower East Side, then the next morning tosses off a play that gets directed by Arthur Penn and stars Christopher Walken. But what about the endless hours of writing, re-drafting, searching for the right bon mot or delicate allusion, forceful punchline or hilarious gag? Not a bit of it. Like a grade 'A' pupil who tells his less gifted and lazier classmates that he never revises ahead of all those exams, Głowacki suggests that his path to literary success was effortless, all inspiration, no perspiration.

But then all autobiography, there's a fair element of self-mythologising here; Głowacki likes to present himself as a hard-drinking, hard-loving bon viveur and man of letters. Showing the workshop side of creativity would not sit comfortably with this image.

A priceless book for anyone who missed out on life in communist times; a translation into English would be useful - though an incredibly difficult challenge to catch the humour in the language.

This time last year:
The drug of the nation

This time two years ago:
Needs and wants

This time three years ago:
On the road from Łódź

This time four years ago:
Aerial views of the ground