Customer Reviews

Passion Play (Kosinski, Jerzy)

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That is, if you can forget about the polo mistakes Kosinski or his ghost writers made. After all, polo is an abstruse sport, filled with arcane rules few understand. The rest of us can enjoy the novel for what it is, a fairly difficult novel about rootlessness and exile in 20th Century America. The hero, Fabian, takes his name from the socialist society of turn of the century England, and uses a trailer to transport himself and his animal across the nation. It's his "little home on wheels," as he calls it. Fabian is a suitable symbol for our deracinated society, in which nobody really has a home because of the topsy-turvy state of the planet.

As for the (numerous) sex scenes, Kosinski does a great job at making us care for the emotions behind the sex acts, not just the bodies, but the hearts and minds of his players. The book is called "Passion Play" not just because of the polo scenes, but because in this book JK hoped to expose the open nerves of his hero with the precision of a master surgeon, each vein and ambition caught and held deftly by a scalpel of precise imagery and language. Who would have thought that he didn't know how to speak a word of English until age eight? Play on, "PASSION PLAY."

In this 1979 novel Jerzy projects himself into the role of errant knight polo player Fabian. Aging seducer of young girls, wandering the country in his camper/stable on wheels, looking for polo matches or a short teaching gig, with occasional diversions into sex clubs and pre-op transsexuals.

Fabian's main problem is that he's too good at the game for his own good. So good in fact that no one will play with him or against him. Kosinski repeats this theme in 1982's PINBALL, only in that case it's an aging composer who was too good for his own good. It might be argued that Kosinski considered his writing to be too good, or at least too far over the heads of most readers. I think most writers feel that at some point in their careers, though almost none of them can back that sentiment up with a masterpieces like THE PAINTED BIRD or BEING THERE.

That is of course the problem with most of Kosinski's books; They are only very good. Always people look back to his crowning glories and ask, "why isn't this new book that great?"

I enjoyed this book. It was at points more cynical and conversely more romantic than I expected. I like being surprised. One difficulty I imagine some readers would have is not knowing, or at least not believing, that a polo player would illicit such lust in the hearts of women. Well, then you've never known a young female equestrian. I lost more than one object of desire to the visiting polo scoundrel, so no suspension of disbelief was required on my part.

One of the things I did not like were some of the more tediously drawn out sex scenes. I think Kosinski was aware of this and worked on it because his next book PINBALL has several of the hottest sex scenes I've ever read.

Painted Bird is on my all time best book list, so after learning that Kosinski had also written about polo--a sport I play & love, I rushed to read it. However, the main character and the baroque & over-the-top violence of the game and sex with a panoply of individuals who might be found in Joel Peter Witkin's photographs gets tiring, and Fabian always remains abstruse at best. If Kosinski desired to shock the polo world, he acheived it--see the other reviews by polo players below--and I do have to give him kudos for that, the image of the average upper-class WASP professional, or better yet macho South American, who bought the book based on polo content, reading the sex scenes does make me laugh. But in the end I'd recommend staying away from this book both from the perspective of a polo lover and Kosinski fan. There is a great novel to be written around polo, but this ain't it.

This book rocked. It was highly sexy, visceral, corporeal, and struggling, as well as classy, heartfelt, and with taste. I don't know anything about polo, but the world portrayed in this book was exclusive and enviable. Not that many people can afford horses and the company of some of the richest people, and while we can certainly feel sympathy for the main character, Fabian, we also can take a step back and realize that while he ages, loses many loves, and cannot form lasting relationships with almost anybody, he has had all the tragedy and drama that anyone could ask for, having experienced a life full of passion and meaning, whether that meaning was contrived from motives of pride or not.

Okay, perhaps the point is that his life was pitiable. If his every significant action was intended to make his life all the more dramatic and sweeping in scope and audacity, then he really was going out on a limb this whole time, all the more reason for him to mourn his own aging; he can't keep up with his own lifestyle any more.

His sex with young women, some underage, might evoke in some readers a repulsion. I am a straight male in my 20s who, while in a monogamous relationship and a relatively law-abiding citizen, can appreciate the fact that sex with underage girls (or boys) is biologically sound. There's the argument that it's wrong because it's taking advantage, etc. But I think there are some who condemn these relationships out of jealousy. 20 something men and women could be jealous of a relationship between a 50 or 60 something man and a teenage girl. The 20 somethings are bypassed entirely, their ripe youth bypassed for the unripe love that will be absorbed by the long past due. But Fabian's justification would seem to be that he teaches his girls how to love, how to be free in their bodies, how to see the world around them as a source of pleasure, not as a maze of meaningless social chitchat.

The bold world of polo accounted for in the first third of the book is fascinating for someone like me who can rarely see a horse up close, let alone a game like polo. The brutality of the death of his friend Eugene, the bitter hatred that Alexandra arouses, the way the husband of a woman he was eyeing was assassinated by tarantula placement, the event making him suspect if he tells. The sad twisted behavior of the poor chubby girl whose Japanese foster parents left her, her begging for Fabian's company, and then her suicide. The dark moments this book contains . . . And these moments all revolve around horses, these huge, majestic animals whose power can be scary. As Fabian says, they're powerful, but they're not as smart as cats, or as loyal as dogs. They are the ultimate force to be reigned in. If you're a horse person and these observations seem to you to be far off the mark, well too bad. Did you ever think you may be only one person with an opinion? Playing polo doesn't make one a judge over imaginary polo practices. Sure he can play polo on the tarmac.

And again, the sex, the sex, the sex. I didn't know sex could be written about in this way. Sex clubs with their exhibition and people watching, transsexuals and all types of gender bending thought, his relationship with a very light skinned "black" girl who passes for white, her racial history a secret she initially intended to keep, and finally his affair with Vanessa, the niece of the rich man who had been his great friend, the man he accidentally killed in a furious one-on-one polo match, spurred on by the absolutely soulless machinations of Alexandra.

The ending is great: he wondered if Vanessa would look out the window of the plane and see him riding his horse, Fabian would look to them like a man riding against an enemy only he could see. His life ends in old age and lost love, his youth and romance used in futility to keep these inevitabilities at bay. It is tragic, yet it seems that one could only live one's life in that way. He has burned out and not faded away. Great read and a great character.

As another commenter indicated, this book is written by someone who only wished he was a polo player. It's frighteningly inaccurate and I can't believe that one polo player in the world would agree with the presentations (or should I say misrepresentations) provided within the book. But to focus on the pathetic longings of a man who cannot even understand the rudimentary principles and practices of an elegant and beautiful sport that he wishes to focus his novel on is not even enough...no the content of the book is entirely jumbled with ridiculous sexual escapades merely placed in convenient intervals to titillate domesticated bookworms who may find men and women and transvestites and transsexuals sodomizing each other interesting. Fortunately I didn't buy this book and with the cold weather upon us I now have the kindling I need to start the Yule log--so thanks Jerzy!

You ever read one of those books and get about a third of the way in and you say to yourself "what the..."?
Well this is one of those books.
In essence its about a rather sad individual who drives across the country in a horse box with his polo ponies.
Now, anyone who plays polo and reads this book will read some of the descriptions with utter astonishment. The idea that you can stop your horsebox in a middle of a city car parking lot and practise on the tarmac is to anyone who knows about horses and or polo impossible. Immediately the writers credibility goes out the window.
This book is badly researched, dull in its content and baffling in its plot.
The second half may be much better than the first - I wouldnt know - I never got that far.