Being There by Jerzy Kosinski Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Being There
Book Review: In the land of videots
Summary: 5 Stars
Jerzy Kosinski brilliantly links Chance--the product of television--with the age we so gracefully are entering. Perhaps, it is not Chance that is the videot; he has flourished from little bud to a flower by the end of the novel. Maybe, then it is the people surrounding him that Kosinski is more concerned about. Those who created Chauncey Gardiner, and those who continue to create their presidents and beliefs in objects that appears well on television. It is an interesting novel to read as it was written in the 1970s, and is almost prophetic of what the world has become today. There are many gaps left by Kosinski to allow the reader to read between the lines of this seemingly "simple" novel. In the land of videots, it would be Kosinski's dream that by chance, you see what most do not.Book Review: Kosinski's media critizism
Summary: 4 Stars
The novella ?Being there" is about the gardener Chance who lives completely isolated at the Old Man's house until he dies. Only educated through TV he has to manage his life on his own and is involved into a car accident and meets EE and Ben Rand, a successful chairman of the Board of the First American Financial Co. They help him to climb up the ladder of success until he is a popular man brought up by media.The novella is unreal and the story seems to be far fetched. But if you rate the novella with regard to what Kosinski's intention was the book becomes better and better. That media is controlling our lives and that this controlling is increasing, that's the main point of Kosinski. It's of course extremly exaggerated but it is a vision of what media might be like in a couple of years or is already today. The story itself could be a bit more detailed and comprehensive because the story moves on too rapidly which makes it more unreal. It seems that the story itself is full of symbols, metaphors, etc. but that's not important to him. He only cares about his message or his warning which he wants to give to the reader. The story is just the medium to explain and to underline it. I think it is worth reading the novella.
Book Review: Magnificently Wicked Satire, as True Today as Ever
Summary: 5 Stars
BEING THERE is an absolute gem, a book worth reading at least once a decade to take a sounding of the world around you. In the childlike, tabula rasa of a simple-minded gardener named Chance, Kosinski has created a complex character who is both sponge and mirror. Out of "Chance, the gardener" comes Chauncey Gardiner, a man whose entire existence in the home and employment of the Old Man has been framed by what he has seen and absorbed from television and learned from his simple gardening job. Unable to read or write, his every action is refracted through the lens of his television "experience." Yet when Chance is unexpectedly released to the world at large as a result of the Old Man's (arguably his father's) death, he becomes a walking mirror, silenting reflecting back at everyone he meets that which they most want to hear and believe about him, and about themselves. More than Woody Allen's Zelig or Winston Groom's (and Tom Hanks's) Forrest Gump, Chance is the perfect empty vessel, the ultimate "other" whom we can each mold into exactly what we most want him to be.
A "chance" coincidence lands an impeccably-dressed Chauncey in the hands of an aging but wealthy and influential financier named Benjamin Rand and his wife, EE, and their social and political connections soon put Chauncey in contact with the President, foreign ambassadors, television and the press. Gardiner's answers to questions draw upon his gardening knowledge, making them sound like profound parables and metaphors with unusually direct aptness and an almost Biblical depth of meaning. His listeners of course hear what they want to hear, and soon Chauncey Gardiner is a national celebrity and rising star in the world of commerce and even politics.
Reading BEING THERE today, it seems hard to believe that Jerzy Kosinski wrote this wickedly funny short parable back in 1970. He was remarkably, albeit sadly, prescient. Consider the American situation today: vicarious thrill-seeking (Fear Factor, The Survivor) and ersatz depictions of reality (The Apprentice, The Loser, The Bachelor, The Contender) fill our television screens, we elevate the most brainless, talentless, or shameless people (Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, William Hung, Loreena Bobbit, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson) to celebrity status, we look to pop cult advisors for guidance in our personal and cultural lives (Dr. Phil, Dr. Ruth, Oprah, Martha Stewart), and we elect (twice!) a President infamous for his intellectual dullness, lack of curiosity, ignorance of facts, disdain for newspapers and reading, and utter incapacity to string three spontaneous sentences together to express a meaningful original thought.
If you don't believe BEING THERE remains a dead-on satire of American life and political culture, refer to Ron Suskind's discussion with a senior official in the Bush Administration (New York Times, 10/17/04) who asserted that guys like him (Suskind), opponents of this Administration, live "in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Sadly, Jerzy Kosinski died in 1991, but wherever he is, he's undoubtedly laughing his head off.
Chauncey Gardiner for President in 2008?
Book Review: Marterpiece Farce
Summary: 5 Stars
Chance was a gardener for a very rich man. He did not know where he was born or who his parents were: all he knew was his garden and his room--and his T. V.. T. V. was all he knew about life. He never learned to read or write. A maid fed him everyday and all he did was tend his garden.
One day, his master died and as since there were no beneficiaries to the estate, lawyers come and Chance, unable yo prove his employment--for that matter who he is-- is forced to leave the house for the first time in his life.
He packs a suitcase with belongings of his prior master's clothes--and within a few feet from the house he is involved in an car accident with EE, the second young wife of Benjamin Rand--a business magnate and an adviser to the President of the USA.
To prevent a scandal, Chance is asked to recover at the Rand's from his injuries. This chance accident makes Chance hang out with the President. Chance gets to advise him on the economy as if he were tending his garden. This sound so profound and fresh that Chance--under the new name of Chancey Gardiner--becomes a celebrity. As he becomes a bigger personality, Chance gets TV interviews and mixes with ambassador--no one can figure amything about his past.
Jerzy Kosinskt's masterpiece farce is a fascinating read and a convincing metaphor that the best politicians are those that have no skills or background. Considering George W. Bush election and re-election it may not be so fictional at all.
Book Review: Not his best
Summary: 4 Stars
It seems to me that the works of Kosinski set in Eastern Europe have far greater strength and authenticity than the work set in America. This particular little piece of ' Look at the anarchic dismal impersonal civilization we live in' school has a touch of the randonmness and violence which Kosinki's world is pervaded by.The story of the gardener whose guardian dies and who has to encounter the ' real world' for the first time gives no sense of any redeeming moment or beauty in life. One might say that Becket doesn't either and that is his genius. But I have the sense that the emptiness which Kosinki finds at the heart of 'Television Civilization's is an emptiness in the heart of Kosinski himself.
Unfairly perhaps I think of Tolstoy and that kind of fiction which makes the person love life more, not wonder why one is reading something which makes one wonder if life really is so worthless and so small.