Jerzy Kosinski's Being There, Novel and Film: Changes Not by Chance

College Literature, Spring 2004 by Lazar, Mary

Being There is unique in the Kosinski canon and blends mythical motifs with a contemporary situation; instead of conflict or sexuality, Kosinski's typical concerns, the thematic concentration falls on television, a medium which Kosinski viewed as dangerous since it insulates people from direct encounters with others, deters self-reflection, and implies a false sense of control. In an interview with David Sohn after a speech which received standing ovations from the participants at the 1974 NCTE Convention (National Conference of Teachers of English), Kosinski clarified his views: "For me, imagining groups of solitary individuals watching their private, remote-controlled TV sets is the ultimate future terror: a nation of videots" (Kosinski 1993d, 98). Believing that human conduct depends on human contact, Kosinski, who earned a Master's degree in Sociology, recognized the social implications for a generation that spends a significant part of the day accepting someone else's version of reality. Orwell's 1984 resonates.

After a few experiments of his own involving children from the ages of seven to fourteen, Kosinski revealed to Sohn,

[C]hildren who spend five or six hours watching television every day . . . are terrified of each other; they develop secondary anxiety characteristics. They want to watch, they don't want to be spoken to.They want to watch, they don't want to talk. They want to watch, they don't want to be asked questions or singled out. . . . So they grow up essentially mute. . . . Instead of coming of age, they're coming apart. . . . More and more parents leave their children in front of the TV as baby sitter, assuming that watching shows is safer than walking in the real streets. . . . But is it?" (Kosinski 1993d, 98-100)

As for adults, even though he was a frequent guest on late-night shows himself, Kosinski reports that "One of the TV talk show hosts once said to me that 'this is the only country in the world where people watch conversation every night,'" and his comment about Nixon is incisive: "We have become so accustomed to the presence of . . . recording devices that even the Occupant of the Oval Office did not realize how incriminating his own recording set-up was" (Kosinski 1993d, 99, 97).

By extension, Kosinski also said that film was inferior to fiction since the viewer's imagination is channelled and controlled. One of the ironies of Being There is that Kosinski himself eventually chose to write a film script for the movie based on a book which denigrates visual media. Obviously, he changed his mind.

The working title for this novel was Dasein, a reference to Heidegger's "dasein" which Kosinski described as "a philosophical term, difficult to translate, which could mean the state in which one is and is not at the same time." He added, however, "One has to be careful with titles. If I had kept to that initial code name it would have connected the book, possibly, with the philosophy of Heidegger," a consequence Kosinski did not desire (1972a, 331). He often manipulated and reinterpreted theoretical precepts, and Being There also exploits the link to Sartre's Being and Nothingness. In his last work, The Hermit of 69th Street, Kosinski mentions Heidegger only once, but Sartre is quoted several times, and one passage refers to his notion of "making-myself-be" (1991, 395, 179). Kosinski "s concept of "being there," however, is more strongly linked to the theologian and Rabbi Abraham Heschel than either of these writers. Kosinski often referred to Heschel's comments on "being-there" and quotes a lengthy passage of Heschel in his "No Religion Is an Island," written a few days before his suicide: