Word: kosinski
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...brutality of the rape scene in Blind Date adds to the fuel of those who criticize Kosinski for the insensitive treatment of women in his novels. Told from Levanter's viewpoint, the rape becomes a justifiable act, the logical culmination of his lust. Elsewhere in the novel, female characters seldom rise above the status of sexual playmates to which Levanter, and presumably Kosinski, relegates them...
...Kosinski objects violently to this criticism, His novels always portray women "as equally dramatic partners to the protagonist," he said...
...Blind Date, Kosinski constructs one moral dilemma after another. One particularly gruesome scene depicts Levanter seeking vengeance against a hotel clerk, whose betrayal of one of Levanter's Eastern European friends to the secret police resulted in the brutal crippling of his friend. Levanter lures the clerk to a sauna, knocks him unconscious, then unflinchingly shoves a saber up his rectum. While Kosinski says he himself would not have killed the clerk, making Levanter perform that act confronts the reader with the question: at what moment should life be spared. "The act generates respect for life even though...
Levanter's revenge also prompts the question of how far any individual should go in appointing himself judge, jury and executioner, but Kosinski rejects such complications, calling them "standards of Hollywood movies." He believes that life requires every individual to be both judge and jury, that moral decisions necessitate individual choice. Still, he admits that "only an individual with an enormous respect for life, his own as well as others, can single out truly ethical moral standards...
Unfortunately, in a world as complex and unpredictable as the one Kosinski perceives, one must make judgments without any hope of foreseeing the consequences of the choice. To take a moral stand requires a plunge into the unknown, the acceptance of a "blind date." One must pin the carnation to the lapel, stand by the lamppost and await an indefinite fate, a handsome beauty or a dilapidated reject. To Kosinski's frustration and disappointment, most Americans would rather stay home and watch television than stand on the street corner and wait for the unexpected