Cockpit

I've used the opening of this darkly prophetic novel--told from the POV of a social terrorist interested only in exploring the depths of human evil like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment--in countless workshops and seminars to illustrate that your protagonist's "sympathetic" nature doesn't mean we LIKE him. 'Sympathetic' in its Greek root suggests that we can "relate to," or "suffer with," a character and from the haunting opening lines that's exactly what causes us to turn the pages--a mixture of horror and our own voyeuristic tendencies.

It's hard to decide which of Kosinski's vignette-based novels is the best, since they're all fairly similiar, and passages are interchangeable. There are slight varitations in theme - the protagonist of The Painted Bird is a child, and in Blind Date you have an investor, while in The Devil Tree you have a wealthy young man, but on the whole each one is as good as another. Considering it, though, I think that Cockpit is the best overall, with some of the most interesting vignettes and the most consistently good writing, and one of the stronger protagonists. It's also the only Kosinski book which I can really say shocked me - usually, I'm prepared for the horrible things which his characters do to each other, remembering that it is Kosinski even when things seem to be going well, but there's an episode in Cockpit involving the elderly which took me by surprise. I reccomend this as an introduction to Kosinski's work, or, if you only read one, make it this.

Kosinski's portrait of an ex CIA agent with a knack for controlling others is disturbing, diabolical, and ultimately entertaining. Tarden is both socially and sexually disfunctional, yet somehow we can all identify with him. Kosinski creates an obsessive depressive character with Gatsby-esque personal drive. Well worth the read.

When you are in the cockpit you have total and absolute control over hundreds of lives. You can do with them what you wish. If you choose, you could end every life or just give them a good scare. In Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Cockpit" the hero - Tarden - is always in the cockpit, always in control. This book makes you realize how easy it is for a total stranger to, through a few mundane manipulations, have your entire life in his hands. A chilling thought indeed.

This book is excellent in that it shows how one man can intimately weave his way into others lives without them knowing it, and alter their lives; somtimes joyously sometimes catastrophically. The more you read this book, the more you identify with the psyche of Tarden, the book's hero. Tarden's life will make anyone's life seem boring and mundane compared to his. International travel, spying, deception, sex, and a 200 lb. horseshoe. Read it and see what I'm talking about.