Product Description

Meet Tarden, an ex-superspy who, thriving on psychological pressure, penetrates the lives of others, leading his momentary partners in a ruthless dance of complex intrigue.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #592126 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
Closer in character to Steps (its sexuality and violence) than anything Kosinski has done since, this is a vicious peepshow-parable about a world we reluctantly recognize now and then through the eyes of one of those distant narrators as cold as the frozen funds he's accumulated. He was once in the Service (of the U.S.), a Ruthenian-born academic with a mind like a memory bank in in a more hypersensitive body. With his assumed names, Tarden maintains several identifies and apartments and disguises in cities around the world. His missions take him everywhere but they are not as explicit as his self-appointed tasks: injecting a toxic substance in supermarket food containers which cause an epidemic or stealing the 18th century snuff boxes which will make him rich. More and more this voyeur-recorder (always looking for new carnal stimulation to which he's sometimes unequal) photographs his blatant sexual encounters until he's overcome by the "pointlessness" of it all and at the end he's alone with the debris of his existence as well as that which he observes all around him. The key is no doubt in the dosing words from Dostoevsky: "the world loves its abomination and does not wish to see it threatened. . . ." But what's to redeem it beyond Kosinski's curiosity-catching legerdemain and quick changes of invention? Even while Tarden is flashing backwards and forwards, the reader feels as if he's marking time. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

A good representation
It's hard to decide which of Kosinski's vignette-based novels is the best, since they're all fairly similiar, and passages are interchangeable. There are slight varitations in theme - the protagonist of The Painted Bird is a child, and in Blind Date you have an investor, while in The Devil Tree you have a wealthy young man, but on the whole each one is as good as another. Considering it, though, I think that Cockpit is the best overall, with some of the most interesting vignettes and the most consistently good writing, and one of the stronger protagonists. It's also the only Kosinski book which I can really say shocked me - usually, I'm prepared for the horrible things which his characters do to each other, remembering that it is Kosinski even when things seem to be going well, but there's an episode in Cockpit involving the elderly which took me by surprise. I reccomend this as an introduction to Kosinski's work, or, if you only read one, make it this.

Kosinski continues his mastery of the vignette novel.
Kosinski's portrait of an ex CIA agent with a knack for controlling others is disturbing, diabolical, and ultimately entertaining. Tarden is both socially and sexually disfunctional, yet somehow we can all identify with him. Kosinski creates an obsessive depressive character with Gatsby-esque personal drive. Well worth the read.

Enter the cockpit if you dare!
When you are in the cockpit you have total and absolute control over hundreds of lives. You can do with them what you wish. If you choose, you could end every life or just give them a good scare. In Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Cockpit" the hero - Tarden - is always in the cockpit, always in control. This book makes you realize how easy it is for a total stranger to, through a few mundane manipulations, have your entire life in his hands. A chilling thought indeed.