It's been thirty years since I read "The Painted Bird," or "Steps," but I immediately recognized the narrative style that grabs you from the first paragraph and doesn't let go.
The main character is Levanter (don't recall if he has a first name). The book pieces together sketches of his life, many of them revealing aspects of a personality that do not seem possible to abide in the same person. He seems to be rich. He sometimes acts with savage, unfeeling cruelty to people who have not harmed him -- a rape (meticulously detailed by the narrator), a hideous murder of a supposed spy. He also acts with sensitive warmth and compassion, with no memory of that other Levanter. How can this be? Is it possible for these two beings to not be in communication with each other, while sharing the same body?
Kosinski makes me squirm. Reading the rape scene is like suddenly being expected to find pleasure in the degradation and humiliation of another human being. And Levanter seems to find that pleasure. Something about Kosinski's details puts the reader in that position. Is that his intention, to expose the reader unexpectedly to a pornographic event, and to make the reader squirm, as if to say, "You've been accepting degradation and humiliation all around you, all your life, and you just let it pass. How can you?"
It's more than Kosinski simply instigating a physical sensation in the reader (repulsion, confusion), just for the sake of creating a riveting literary effect. I'm just not sure what it is.
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