August 08, 2008
Chance saves Jerzy Kosinski (1969)
The writer Jerzy Kosinski survived growing up in Poland during the Nazi occupation in World War II, thanks to the Catholic family who hid the Jewish boy. On this day, it was a luggage handler's inattention that saved him from playing a role in one of the most notorious murders of the 1960s.Kosinski was flying from Paris to Los Angeles. It would be a long, exhausting flight, but at the end of the flight, he would find his way up into the hills overlooking Los Angeles, to a home tucked away amid the trees in Benedict Canyon.
After the long flight over the Atlantic, the plane landed at New York's JFK Airport for a layover. Kosinski intended to stay on the plane, but his luggage had other plans. They were taken off accidentally, and he was informed that he had to go through Customs to get them back. By the time the mess was sorted out, the plane took off without him. Kosinski spent the rest of the day in New York, to find out that his friends in the home in Benedict Canyon had been murdered by the followers of Charles Manson.
Sometimes, it seems as if fate plays with us. Looking back, we can see that decisions made in a moment can have life-changing consequences. Kosinski was planning to visit the house at 10050 Cielo Drive because it was owned by his friend, Polish emigre, Roman Polanski. Roman wasn't there that night; he was in Paris making a movie. But his wife was: Sharon Tate, rising actress who was pregnant with Roman's son.
Also there was Voytek Frykowski, a young man from Poland who Roman befriended. Kosinski knew him as well, in New York City. In fact, just eight months before, he had introduced him to his latest lover, Abigail Folger, the 25-year-old heiress to a coffee fortune. They had fallen in love, driven across the country, and ended up at the Cielo Drive house. But their relationship had reached the end of the line, and they were in the process of breaking up. Friends said afterwards that she was trying to get up enough nerve to go it alone.
Eight years later, Kosinski included the Manson murders in novel, "Blind Date
." He did it: not because my friends died there, but because it is a good reminder of how unpredictable our lives really are. And how Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles, where they all died, typifies our collective predicament. Movie stars, representing Hollywood! Woytek (Frokowski), representing the hopeful immigrant; Abigail Folger, one of the great heiresses of American life; Jay Sebring, who came from the industry of beauty; and, of course, the peaceful house, the ultimate luxury, the ultimate removal from society. And yet there you have it - Blind Date."An element of chance played a similar, but less violent role, in Kosinski's 1971 novel "Being There
," in which a series of mishaps elevates Chauncey "Chance" Gardiner, the simple-minded gardener, to presidential adviser.Born: Sara Teasdale, poet, St. Louis, Mo., 1884; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, novelist, short-story writer, Washington, D.C., 1896; Philip Larkin, poet, Coventry, Warwickshire, 1922; Carolyn Wheat, mystery author, Green Bay, Wis., 1946; Randy Shilts, journalist, Davenport, Iowa, 1951; Ian Pears, art historian, novelist, Coventry, England, 1955.
Died: Shirley Jackson, novelist, short-story writer, N. Bennington, Vt., 1965; Nicholas Monsarrat, novelist, London, 1979.
Quote for the Day: "I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife." — Philip Larkin, who was born today in 1922
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