When I was young, The Painted Bird made quite strong impression on me. It was an ugly story, but it felt true to something I was feeling about the world.
Then I learned that Kosiński probably plagiarised much of the book and was, allegedly, an all-around fraud. My only thought was, "So let's take his name off the cover and keep reading the book."
I see little point in exalting an author because their books are good. The same goes for musicians, artists, poets, athletes, et cetera. Mythologies are themselves merely stories. And they're generally boring.
Perhaps something like this was flickering round the edges of my mind when I wrote a story on the raising and tearing down of statues. That might sound topical, but the story itself probably doesn't have much to say about our moment.
It is, as usual, a bit of Bellatresque abstruseness.
The story, called "On donne l’idée du vrai avec du faux", has just been published in issue 10.03 of Menacing Hedge. I'm grateful to the editors for giving it a home. Read it here.
In fact, read the whole issue. It's good stuff.