Being There by Jerzy Kosinski Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Being There
Book Review: humourous parable about personality cults
Summary: 4 Stars
It doesn't really matter that the events in _Being There_ are completely improbable. It's still a very funny book, and it works well as a parable about innocence, stupidity, and how we choose our heroes.Viewers of the movie miss the dramatic irony in the first-person narrative of the book. This makes things much funnier, and the satire that much more trenchant.
Book Review: it quit while ahead
Summary: 4 Stars
"Being There" is a cute little book, a modern day fable. Chance (later christened "Chauncey Gardiner", a misunderstood form of "Chance, the gardener") has lived for forty-some years in an abbreviated world. There, he tended the garden of the Old Man, ate his food, and watched television. When the Old Man dies at the beginning, Chance is thrust into the world outside with no tangible proof of his existence: no birth certificate, tax statements, library cards, etc.Dressed in the Old Man's elegant suits, Chance becomes drawn into the 1960's world of WASP-y social privilege: businessmen, journalists, the President. His simple statements about his garden or the seasons are understood as eloquent, moving metaphors for The Economy or Statesmanship. Repeated in the mouths of politicians and reporters, Chance's words take on a wholly different sort of meaning from that which he originally intended. Thus, the book's premise: that a man can be thrust into the spotlight by the compellingness of his image.
Chance is a mirror, as it were, in which others see only those meanings which they give to him. Moreover, he is a sympathetic figure, explicitly described as within himself, confident, and so a touching hero in today's multimedia age. With all the talk of cameras, looking and penetration, Kosinski's novel could probably delight a film theorist (television is the medium through which Chance learned of the world, and through which he filters his experiences when in the world). For the rest of us, this two-hour read is clever, amusing, and doesn't overstay its welcome.
Book Review: quick short read
Summary: 3 Stars
Our book discussion group read this book and we all felt that it a pretty good story. The ending was disappointing but after discussing further, was appropriate. This is a quick read book and can be read in about 4-5 hours.Book Review: surprisingly dull
Summary: 2 Stars
This is another of those novels that is less good than the film that was made from it. After I saw the film, I read the book and it utterly lacked the wit and irony of the performance by Sellers in the film. The novel moves slowly, is not very funny, and the writing style utterly lacks flavor. In contrast, the film was the perfect parody of the beginning of the Reagan era, in which appearences and the assumptions of the observers mix in the most surprising ways. Oh well. It appears to me that Kosinsky did his thing and had nothing much to say after The Painted Bird.Not recommended.
Book Review: we reap what we sow
Summary: 4 Stars
Kosinski must have had a crystal ball, because it is all to apparent this story could easily be applied today. Given this political year, I have to recommend this book to anyone who watches the talking heads on television. The main character, Chance, is the epitome of every "expert" on t.v.. We swallow the bitter pill of platitudes and opinions everyday on cable t.v. news and the aftertaste is blissfully sweet. Amazingly, we ask ourselves 100 days into the next presidency and say what happened - where's the beef? Well, I'll tell you what happened, we heard what we wanted to hear and so we bought into it. This book tells this story well. This satire will never go out of date - it is to the point, despite the one odd aside of a meaningless sex act, and it should be put on a mandatory reading list for political science majors.