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Career Of Nicodemus Dyzma
''The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma'' () is a political novel by the Polish author Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz. It was serialized in the newspaper ''ABC'' from 1 January to 26 May 1931 before being published in book form by Towarzystwo Wydawnicze Rój in 1932. Having become his first major literary success with immediate material rewards, it prompted Dołęga-Mostowicz to write and publish roughly two books per year (in total, he wrote 17 novels). The book, very popular already in the interwar period, was made into a 1956 film with Adolf Dymsza in the title role, then into a 1980 television miniseries starring Roman Wilhelmi, and into a 2002 film starring Cezary Pazura. Plot Nicodemus Dyzma is a small-town man who comes to the Polish capital from the Eastern provinces (known as "Kresy") in search of work. While walking the streets of Warsaw, he finds a lost invitation to a reception at the Hotel Europejski. Hoping for a free meal, he decides to use it because he owns a tuxedo. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz
Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz (; 10 August 1898 – 20 September 1939) was a Polish writer, journalist and author of over a dozen popular novels. One of his best known works, which in Poland became a byword for fortuitous careerism, was '' The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma'' (, 1932). Literary historians believe the book inspired the 1971 novel ''Being There'' by Jerzy Kosiński, with some charging Kosiński with plagiarism, which sparked considerable controversy in the West. Life and work Tadeusz Mostowicz, the son of a wealthy Polish lawyer in the age of partitions, was born on 10 August 1898 at his family's village of Okuniewo near Vitebsk in the Russian Empire (now Belarus). After graduating from ''gimnazjum'' (high school) in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), then also in the Russian Empire, in 1915 Tadeusz embarked upon law studies at the University of Kyiv while the First World War raged on in Central Europe. He befriended numerous fellow members of the Polish diaspora and became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Con Artist
A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men') at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". Terminology Other terms for "scam" include confidence trick, con, con game, confidence game, confidence scheme, ripoff, stratagem, finesse, grift, hustle, bunko, bunco, swindle, flimflam, gaffle, and bamboozle. The perpetrator is often referred to as a scammer, confidence man, con man, con artist, grifter, hustler, or swindler. The intended victims are known as marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls (from the word ''gullible''). When accomplices are employ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Stokes
Geoffrey Stokes (May 3, 1940 – September 12, 1995) was an American journalist and author. Stokes is best known for ''Star-Making Machinery: The Odyssey of an Album'', his 1976 book about the creation of a Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen album. The book received strong reviews. ''The Los Angeles Times'' considered it "the best piece of reportage on how the music biz processes its wayward art." Robert Christgau called it "one of the best rock books ever written and the definitive account of how the music biz operates." ''Kirkus Reviews'' wrote that it was a "deflating chronicle of 'the interplay between giant corporations' at the expense of the musicians and the music—once thought to be the harbinger of radical consciousness." ''Pinstripe Pandemonium: A Season With the New York Yankees'', an overview of the New York Yankees' 1983 season, was favorably reviewed by ''The New York Times''. The paper preferred it to ''Balls'', Graig Nettles and Peter Golenbock's book abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, ''The Voice'' began as a platform for the creative community of New York City. It ceased publication in 2017, although its online archives remained accessible. After an ownership change, ''The Voice'' reappeared in print as a quarterly in April 2021. ''The Village Voice'' has received three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Press Foundation Award, and the George Polk Award. ''The Village Voice'' hosted a variety of writers and artists, including writer Ezra Pound, cartoonist Lynda Barry, artist Greg Tate, music critic Robert Christgau, and film critics Andrew Sarris, Jonas Mekas, and J. Hoberman. In October 2015, ''The Village Voice'' changed ownership and severed all ties with former parent company Voice Media Group (VMG). ''The V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerzy Kosiński
Jerzy Kosiński (; born Józef Lewinkopf; 14 June 19333 May 1991) was a Jewish-Polish-American writer and two-time president of the American chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English. Born in Poland, he survived World War II there, together with his family, with the help of their Polish villager neighbors; and, as a young man, he emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen. He was known for novels including ''Being There'' (1971) and the controversial '' The Painted Bird'' (1965), which were adapted as films, respectively, in 1979 and 2019. Life Kosiński was born Józef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland, in 1933. As a child during World War II, he lived in occupied central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosiński, which his father gave him. Eugeniusz Okoń, a Catholic priest, issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance to Polish Jews, at gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Being There (novel)
''Being There'' is a satirical novel by the Polish-born writer Jerzy Kosinski, published April 21, 1971. Set in America, the story concerns Chance, a simple gardener who unwittingly becomes a much sought-after political pundit and commentator on the vagaries of the modern world. It has been suggested that Kosinski modeled the character of Chance after a former greenhouse manager named Jerry Jarvis who became the national leader of the transcendental meditation movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s, whom Kosinski had met at the local TM Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who embodied the calm and simple manner of Chauncey Gardiner. The Cambridge TM Center was for years located at the corner of Chauncy and Garden Streets. A film based on the book was made in 1979; Kosinski co-wrote the film's screenplay with Robert C. Jones. Plot The intellectually handicapped Chance works as a gardener for the Old Man, a retired senior lawyer. Chance’s mother, also intellectu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacek Kaczmarski
Jacek Marcin Kaczmarski (22 March 1957 – 10 April 2004) was a Polish singer, songwriter, poet and author. Life He was the son of painter Anna Trojanowska-Kaczmarska, a Pole of Jewish background, and the artist Janusz Kaczmarski. Kaczmarski was a voice of the Solidarity trade union movement in 1980s Poland. His songs criticized the ruling communist regime and appealed to the tradition of patriotic resistance within Poles. He remains best known for his protest songs on social and political subjects (" Mury" (''Walls'') based on " L'Estaca" by Lluís Llach, "Obława" (''Wolf hunt (lit. Raid)'')). However, his commentary was not restricted to contemporary politics, and his texts' themes have retained their relevance in Polish culture beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist bloc. He made his debut in 1977 at the Student Song Festival, where he was awarded first prize for his work "Obława" based on the song "Охота на волков" by Vladimir Vysotsky. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Status
Social status is the relative level of social value a person is considered to possess. Such social value includes respect, honour, honor, assumed competence, and deference. On one hand, social scientists view status as a "reward" for group members who treat others well and take initiative. This is one explanation for its apparent cross-cultural universality. On the other hand, while people with higher status experience a litany of benefits—such as greater health, admiration, resources, influence, and freedom—those with lower status experience poorer outcomes across all of those metrics. Importantly, status is based in widely shared ''beliefs'' about who members of a society judge as more competent or moral. While such beliefs can stem from an impressive performance or success, they can also arise from possessing characteristics a society has deemed meaningful like a person's race or occupation. In this way, status reflects how a society judges a person's relative social worth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Class
Political class (or political elite) is a concept in comparative political science, originally developed by Italian political theorist Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941). It refers to the relatively small group of activists that is highly aware and active in politics, and from whom the national leadership is largely drawn. As Max Weber noted, they not only live "for politics"—like the old notables used to—but make their careers "off politics" as policy specialists and experts on specific fields of public administration. Mosca approached the study of the political class by examining the mechanisms of reproduction and renewal of the ruling class; the characteristics of politicians; and the different forms of organisation developed in their wielding of power. Elected legislatures may become dominated by subject-matter specialists, aided by permanent staffs, who become a political class. Comparative elites The presence or absence of a political class in a country depends on its history ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mufti (dress)
In British English and some Commonwealth dialects of English, mufti is plain or ordinary clothes, especially when worn by one who normally wears, or has long worn, a military or other uniform, such as a school uniform. It is also called civies and civvies (slang for "civilian attire"). Origins The word originates from the Arabic "Mufti" (), meaning an Islamic scholar. It has been used by the British Army since 1816 and is thought to derive from the vaguely Eastern style dressing gowns and tasselled caps worn by off-duty officers in the early 19th century. Yule and Burnell's ''Hobson-Jobson'' (1886) notes that the word was "perhaps originally applied to the attire of dressing-gown, smoking-cap, and slippers, which was like the Oriental dress of the Mufti". Another possibility for the origin of the use of the word “mufti” in the context of school clothes is that the word is taken from Urdu, in which mufti means free, originated from Persian. Mufti day A "mufti day" (also k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Józef Piłsudski
Józef Klemens Piłsudski (; 5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (Poland), Chief of State (1918–1922) and first Marshal of Poland (from 1920). In the aftermath of World War I, he became an increasingly dominant figure in Polish politics and exerted significant influence on shaping the country's foreign policy. Piłsudski is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic, which was re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final partition of Poland in 1795, and was considered ''de facto'' leader (1926–1935) of the Second Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs (Poland), Minister of Military Affairs. Seeing himself as a descendant of the culture and traditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Piłsudski believed in a multi-ethnic Poland—"a home of nations" including indigenous ethnic and religious minorities. Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party. Bel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanation
Sanation (, ) was a Polish political movement that emerged in the interwar period, prior to Józef Piłsudski's May 1926 ''Coup d'État'', and gained influence following the coup. In 1928, its political activists went on to form the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (''BBWR''). The Sanation movement took its name from Piłsudski's goal of a moral " sanation" (healing) of the Polish body politic. The movement functioned cohesively until Piłsudski's death in 1935. Following his death, Sanation fragmented into several factions, including "the Castle" (President Ignacy Mościcki and his supporters)."''Sanacja''," ''Encyklopedia Polski'', p. 601. Sanation, which supported authoritarian rule, was led by a circle of Piłsudski's close associates, including Walery Sławek, Aleksander Prystor, Kazimierz Świtalski, Janusz Jędrzejewicz, Adam Koc, Józef Beck, Tadeusz Hołówko, Bogusław Miedziński, and Edward Śmigły-Rydz. It emphasized the primacy of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
