Episode 10: Call the Time Eternity

A Village voice exposé denounces Kosinski for using ghostwriters and casts aspersions on his entire literary career. Nine years later Jerzy Kosinski is a broken man. His writing career is over; he’s managed to write only one novel which was unanimously panned. One night after going to the movies, he drowns himself in his bathtub. Across town, Mailer’s easing into the role of one of the aging titans of American letters. One of Mailer’s many mistresses publishes a tell-all memoir that includes the claim made by a number of people who knew him well: that the most manly, heterosexual man in America was actually bi-sexual. But he manages to live into old age and die peacefully before the book’s release, avoiding the issue and also avoiding any reckoning for stabbing his wife and for all the other horrible shit he said and did.