Being There by Jerzy Kosinski Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Being There
Book Review: Boring
Summary: 1 Stars
I think this book is that type of book whick makes a person sick . I think only psycho people like this type of book. That's all.Book Review: Brief, yet entertaining satire
Summary: 4 Stars
A friend recommended Jerzy Kosinski to me, so I thought I'd start with a fairly familiar title, though I have yet to see the movie. "Being There" is quite short, though the story is by no means short on style and quality. Kosinski offers a powerful, unlikely hero in Chance, whose simple philosophies on tending a garden are misinterpreted by people around them as guidance for controlling the national economy. It is amusing to read how all these well-educated, self-important people twist Chance's words to suit their own purposes and beliefs, so much that this simple-minded gardener is, in the course of a few days, one of the most admired men in the nation!I also like Kosinski's take on the media, as presented through Chance's love for television -- he accepts a name change to Chauncey Gardiner (as accidentally heard by EE Rand), thinking that is standard for people on television to do. The scene in particular where Chance is invited on a program to speak is fun to read, as Chance wonders how he will translate physically onscreen. Though this book was written twenty years ago, it still speaks to us today as a good satire on media and American culture, and how we tend to make heroes of people who do not necessarily fit the mold. It would have been interesting to see this work translated today, with the advent of cable television and the Internet.
Book Review: Chance thinks
Summary: 4 Stars
Loved the movie so thought I would read the book. The book is different in several respects of course. Chance thinks in the book in ways that can be only hypothesized in the movie. He knows how to use the phone and elevator. He knows to say he does not drink. Also note that the sexual observations are much more descriptive - perhaps necessarily so in the book. But in each of these cases I feel the description takes away some of the effect of the movie. All in all, while the plot remains the same the movie seems to me to be the better of the two. The book is a good read none the less. It is light and a good bed book. It reads fast and makes for an interesting comparison with the movie.Book Review: Chance, the hero
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a modern novel about a stupid man being a gardener all his life and so never gone out of the house of the man, where he has lived all his life.Going out of the house for the first time, he was flung into the "real world". After being injured by the limousine of E.E., he gets his first new friends - E.E. and his husband Mr. Rand. And then his career begins.Meeting the president, TV-shows and interviews will be normal in his daylife.This is an amousing novel full of sex, money and power. It is based on the two main elements garden and TV. The hero of this story - Chance - is very child-like and does not know how to react in the "new real world".
If you read the first chapters, they seems to be very boring.But if you go on reading, it becomes more and more interesting and funny.But this you all have to find out alone!!!
Sometimes the novel is difficult to understand, but you will understand it, if you go on reading. Chance, the hero, speaks in a very childish way, what makes the story very amousing. He influence you by his way of speaking. You will get an other oppinion to your life, after you have read the novel!
Book Review: Das Wunschbild: A Fable for our Times
Summary: 5 Stars
I first became aware of this book as the basis for the remarkable film starring Peter Sellers and Melvyn Douglas. Kosinskis book, however, is just as remarkable in its own right. The hero of the book is Chance, a mentally retarded adult who works as the gardener at the home of a wealthy retired New York lawyer. During the whole of his adult life, Chance has never left the house and garden; his only contact with the outside world is through television, which he watches obsessively. His life changes, however, when his employer dies, the house is sold and he is forced to leave. Chance is slightly injured when he is hit by a car belonging to Elizabeth Eve (EE), the wife of Benjamin Rand, a rich and influential Wall Street financier and a friend of the President. EE, mishearing Chance the gardener as Chauncey Gardiner and mistakenly believing Chance to be a successful businessman, invites him to stay with her and her husband at their home. A series of misunderstandings leads all concerned to believe that Chance is not only a businessman but also an economic prophet. He is invited to speak on national television where he talks about the only thing he understands, gardening. A series of platitudes about the changing of the seasons in the garden is taken to be an extended metaphor forecasting an upturn in the economy, and his supposed optimism strikes a chord with the viewing public. The book ends with the elderly, terminally ill, Rand about to name Chance as his heir and successor, and the President about to nominate him as his vice-presidential running-mate.
The book is short, a novella rather than a novel, of around 100 pages. The style is direct, simple and like a fable. It has been interpreted as a satire on the role of television in the modern age or on the American political system. Those elements are certainly present and were emphasised more in the film than in the book. (In Britain the film was widely taken to be a direct attack on the Reagan administration, even though it was actually made during the Carter years but not released here until after the presidential election). The significance of the book, however, is a deeper one.
In the film, Peter Sellers portrayed Chance as a lonely, pitiable character in late middle age, young only by comparison with his aged employer and the ageing Rand. It is an affecting performance, but subtly different from the Chance of Kosinskis book. Kosinskis Chance is relatively young, good-looking and emotionally detached from his surroundings. This detachment allows others to treat him as what in German would be called a Wunschbild, that is to say a picture of ones wishes, a blank canvas onto which one can paint ones own desires. Each of the other characters sees in the supposed Chauncey Gardiner whatever he or she wishes to see. Rand, who has no children with EE and who is estranged from the children of his first marriage, sees him as a potential successor to his business empire and almost as an adopted son. EE, sexually frustrated in a marriage to a much older man, sees him as a lover and a possible second husband after Rands death. The President sees him as the ideal candidate for Vice-President, a position he has been struggling to fill. The Soviet Ambassador to the UN sees him as a liberal, Russophile capitalist who will use his influence to further east-west relations. The American TV audience see him as the man who will lead them out of recession and into prosperity.
The book certainly is, in part, a commentary on the television age. It certainly is, in part, a political satire. (We can all think of politicians who have the ability to be all things to all men). Most importantly, however, it is a brilliant fable on the human capacity for self-delusion and for seeing others not for what they are but for what we would wish them to be.