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Author Jerzy Kosiński (1933-91) reads from and discusses his novel, Cockpit, with Charles Ruas and Linda Rosechild-Harris in 1975. Cockpit is the debriefing of a mysterious CIA operative, Tarden. Now a fugitive, he moves across the landscape free of identity, in search of adventure and intrigue. Kosiński describes the subtext as the authentic search for self and establishing being the protagonist of one’s own life while in service to the institutions that envelop us. Kosiński’s first novel, The Painted Bird, published in 1965, was heralded as a classic by the likes of Elie Wiesel and Arthur Miller. This was followed by a series of bestselling masterworks. His suicide followed a widely disputed account of the authenticity of his holocaust experience as a child in Poland.