Being There (novel)

Being There

First edition cover
Author	Jerzy Kosinski
Language	English
Publisher	Harcourt Brace
Publication date	1970
Pages	165
ISBN	0-370-01453-7
Preceded by	Steps
Followed by	The Devil Tree

Being There is a satirical novel by the Polish-born writer Jerzy Kosinski, published in 1970.^[1] Set in America, the story concerns Chance, a simple gardener who unwittingly becomes a much sought-after political pundit and commentator on the vagaries of the modern world. It has been suggested that Kosinski named the character of Chance after , the national leader of the transcendental meditation movement from 1965 to 1978,^[2] whom Kosinski had met at the local TM Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who resembled the calm and simple manner of Chance Gardiner.^[3] The Cambridge TM Center was for many years located at the corner of Chauncy and Garden Streets.

A film based on the book was made in 1979; Kosinski co-wrote the film's screenplay with Robert C. Jones.

Background[]

When Kosinski published Being There, wrote historian Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, "most Polish critics immediately recognized [his book] as a version of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy (Nikodem Dyzma's Career) by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz, a novel from the interwar period, and Kosinski was accused of plagiarism",^[4] as he was with his first novel.

With his first novel, The Painted Bird, published in 1965, Kosinski was accused of plagiarizing a book published in the Second Polish Republic by the Polish ethnographer Henryk Biegeleisen.^[4]

References[]

External links[]

• Short synopsis, 2014 Guardian News.^{[permanent dead link]}
• Being there / Jerzy Kosinski Catalogue of the British Library.

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