Review: Being There

Being There by Jerzy Kosiński

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The more books I read the harder it gets to judge a book, despite the cover. It is the same for movies for me, which is why I am happy to be able to write moviereviews at IMDB without having to hand out points.
One such book that is hard to judge is 'Being There'. It is a small book that I got at my local library, which few English bookcases seem to resemble some magical library that is able to conjure up far more books than I was willing to give it credit for based on it's apparent size.
'Being there' grabbed my interest because I know there is a movie of the same name that is based on this book. I haven't seen this movie, and now, after reading the book, I am not sure if I would want to see it because I doubt that it has much to add to it. But then again, maybe I will if I run into it.
'Being there' has got the same kind of atmosphere as Forest Gump has. A middleaged innocent man named Chance - you might see him as innocent as a new born baby - is confronted with the real world after his protector dies.
Chance has spent his whole life as a gardener for this rich man and has never set a foot outside the house. The only way he knows about the world is through the television. On his first trip outside he happens to get hit by the car of Eve Rand, the wife of (another) powerful and rich man, Benjamin Rand. She takes Chance home and so he eventually mingles with the high and mighty through a series of happenstances and mistakes.
His innocence, simplistic look and television knowledge is taken for wisdom or shrewdness and his lack of background and identity become points in his favor in a world where any kind of background can be used against you.
This is basically what the book is about and it is told in a rather matter of fact kind of way. The story is hard to be taken serious and kept light, but sometimes I got the feeling that right below the irony and tongue in cheek humor there is sarcasm or perhaps cynicism lurking.
For instance, while Chance has no proper knowledge of the economy he tells his ideas based on his experiences as a gardener after being asked about it. These words are thus (mis)taken as words of (economic) wisdom and even repeated by the president of the United States on television. The implication is that you don't really need any kind of proper understanding of economics as long as the words sound right and that those who ought to have a deeper understanding actually seem to lack proper judgement. In addition Chance gets invited to a television show and is asked for advise which shows that it is more important to have the right connections than to have proper understanding of the subject. Which might be true, but is sad to hear anyway.
The book is full of scenes born from mistaken communication. At some point this even results in some embarrassing intimate sex scenes, which I found a bit distasteful. I won't go into details.
Overall the book is slightly amusing but also a bit shallow. It's shortness is probably it's saving grace, another hundred pages would probably have seen the plot falter in one way or another. By now it is also something that you probably have seen and read before.
A book for those who like light entertainment. I am not sure if there is anything thing more to it.






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