Being There by Jerzy Kosinski Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Being There
Book Review: From the garden you are isolated of the outer world !
Summary: 5 Stars
The garden is sinister metaphor where Gardiner finds his particular matrix . In this garden he simply exists and his codes are so naive and plenty of ingenuity that makes us smile .
But for those ironical twists of fate the life -which has much more imagination that anyone of us- will lead to this pleasant and primary man in a weird chain events that will become him in a neo Icarus.
Powerful, intriguing and bitter parable about the triviality in which we are inmersed .
Read this outstanding novel and many things will appear before your eyes : and please don't forget the phrase of Morpheus to Neo in Matrix:
Ignorance is bliss!
Book Review: Good
Summary: 3 Stars
Fable. Satire. Gimmick. Twisted. Believable, but not quite plausible. Pure Kosinski. As always, a rush.
Book Review: Hilariously Written Commentary
Summary: 5 Stars
Chance, an idiot savant finds himself in situations where, by association with an extraordinarily rich and socially connected couple, his simple words are treated as metaphors for society's problems. He is quoted extensively all the while maintaining that he doesn't read, and constantly watches television. His sound bites infiltrate the highest echelons of government, and society, and unfortunately, the possibility of something like this happening seems all too likely.
Book Review: How Sweet To Be An Idiot
Summary: 4 Stars
"Being There" is a novel about the capricious issue of existence and identity in the television age, yet it is told in the manner of a child's fable, with simple, often beautiful prose and a narrative as processed through the consciousness of a simpleton.
That simpleton, Chance the Gardener, a.k.a. Chauncey Gardiner, is cast out of the garden he has tended which has been all he has ever known of the world, left to fend for himself in uncaring Manhattan. A fortuitous accident leaves him in the care of a dying plutocrat and his young, sexually frustrated wife, for both of whom Chance is the perfect tabula rasa upon which to affix their aspirations and sensibilities. How soon before they guess at Chance's true nature, and kick him out of their world? Or will he somehow avoid detection, with his storehouse of borrowed phrases and techniques he has learned from television?
Jerzy Kosinski can't tell a joke to save his life, but he writes with beautiful clarity.
"And yet, with all its life, even at the peak of its bloom, the garden was its own graveyard," goes one early passage of Chance tending his garden. "Under every tree and bush lay rotten trunks and disintegrated and decomposing roots. It was hard to know which was more important: the garden's surface or the graveyard from which it grew and into which it was constantly lapsing."
If "Being There" the novel suffers from one thing, it's "Being There" the movie. There, Chance is played by the sublime Peter Sellers, who finds every glimmer of humor in Chance's character, adds some more, and yet carries Kosinski's character to metaphoric heights the author himself didn't envision. There's also the fact that the film plays more assuredly with the video medium that is a central theme in both stories, throwing up bits of real commercials and children's TV to play up against the plot shifts.
What the book has going for it is its use of fable-like elements that don't translate so well onto film. The Russian ambassador tells Chance that he has "that certain Krylovian touch," referring to a popular Russian fable-writer, and its true enough. Near the end of the book, we are told by a White House observer that the sequence of events that have brought Chance to global attention span fill just four days, which is clearly not in the realm of reality as we know it, especially given the soporific pace of events in the book.
There's an edge to this fable: The Russian ambassador goes on to send Chance a copy of Krylov's fables in the original Russian, which we discover has been taken from a recently arrested Jewish dissident. But characters who present a voice of skepticism in the film, like Louise the cook and Dr. Allenby, are absent here. So too, alas, is the film's finest single moment, its enigmatic ending which actually underlines the fairy-tale quality of this story.
Chance does have some self-knowledge in the book, just enough to wonder who he is and whether he will become two people when he appears on television, the Chance on TV and the Chance who watches. Within its simple constructs, Kosinski asks some deep questions and presents us with food for thought. Plus he doesn't take very many pages to do it. Fables work better when told fast. "Being There" is an adult fable told very well.
Book Review: If by Chance...
Summary: 4 Stars
Jerzy Kosinski has written a delightful modern parable. Each actor in this allegorical tale sees Chance as a wise and insightful sage. But Chance, dubbed Chauncey Gardiner, is an illiterate gardener whose only contact with the outside world before being caught up in high finance, politics, and diplomacy was his garden and his television watching habit. He doesn't try to hide his past as he adapts as best he can to his new environment. His aphorisms taken from his experiences in the garden are interpreted by his listeners as great sooth. Because he has no discoverable past he is believed to be an operative some powerful organization in the eyes of the beholders.
This is a story to enjoy and give some thought to.