Entertaining series of strange and surprising vignettes. Most involve an anonymous narrator in a vaguely fascist society drawn into erotic, violent or criminal scenarios. Kosinski has a gift for lucid and imaginative prose which makes the stories pleasurable to read. However, they are too short and disconnected to really develop into anything with depth. ( )

Stunning.

A surrealistic inner landscape revealed through dreamlike episodes, each fantastic yet eerily familiar. Step by step, I’m drawn into this world. I think I’ll never recover from this book. (And I don’t want to!) ( )

Being familiar with Kosinski to some degree, having read Being There and Cockpit (many years ago, wasn't taken to it greatly), I found Steps to be a simple prose progression of what the book's summary highlights, that being the oppressor and oppressed, in various timeless and geographically void communities. What I like about Jerzy's work is his sometimes absurd narrative explications on character motivation such as in one moment a character happens to be talking to a Detective Agency who suggests following him in order to reveal how their services work, this of course ties in neatly with the rest of the story which I wont reveal - as much as I sometimes say aloud in my head "Really Jerzy, are you seriously expecting me to swallow that", it seems to be an idiosyncrasy he has when blending motives into the story arch.

The perversions are well dispersed amongst quite whimsical tales of stand over tactics and tall tales. Jerzy had a personal interest in 'underground' kink apparently and I enjoy the way he integrates the ideas into seemingly anecdotal accounts of life as lived by certain unnamed communities. There is nothing in this novel that is sensational, it is all dutiful 'anti-erotica' as I call it, and a term borrowed from the forward to Alfred Jarry's 'Visits of love'. Anti-erotica is where the kink and ritual takes over the sexual and the moral, the lasciviousness becomes more stylised - the perversion becomes pragmatic and allows for other ideas to be fleshed out so to speak.

Well, I quite liked it, and am not entirely sure what else of Jerzy Kosinski I would like to read but so far I think Being There and Steps are decent pieces of writing. ( )

Ever wonder about the twisted things people do to each other? This author shows you with a series of first-person scenarios that reveal the underbelly of humanity — sexuality, vengeance, cruelty, power, violence, alienation, and more. (I am not convinced the I in each story is the same man.) I often felt like a voyeur reading this. And I wondered what was the purpose.

The brief stories, like pages ripped from a diary, did not follow the same characters, yet tweaked the dark side of human nature in all of us. So there was a common theme: sometimes human nature is not comfortable witnessing. The who and the where is not clear, but the stories reflected an overall environment and atmosphere likely experienced by this Polish author who survived World War II. He became a U.S. citizen.

The book is a strange read yet won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1969. Perhaps it's not so much what the stories are about but more about how you react to each of them. The book, labeled a "literary shocker," certainly will prompt a reaction. Perhaps that's it's purpose. I'm glad I read it.

Still curious, though, about the title. Steps ... the path we walk through life and where it takes us? Or the staircase we stand on: go up or should we go down? Or simply the choices we make as we step into each day. I'm open to theories.

Some quotes:

“Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.”

“We did our best to understand the murder: the murderer was a part of our lives; not so the victim.”

“Aware of its value as a restorative, I stole only black caviar.”

“For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?”

“He had always located the essential truth of his life in his wants and compulsions.” ( )

Kosinski is a very disturbing writer. Much of this seems autobiographical, and yet it is called a work of fiction. Vignettes, ranging from the banal to the grotesque to the sadistic, form the storyline. Reading it is in moral terms voyeurism. The reader is complicit in allowing the author to tell the story. It is hard to rate a book like this, because structurally and in terms of writing skill it is well done. It is the content itself that is objectionable. Be wary of treading this path lest it contaminate you. ( )