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

College Literature, Spring 2004 by Lazar, Mary

There are two ways of facing and inspecting human being: from within or from without. . . . I suggest that although it is possible and legitimate to ponder being in general or the being of all beings, it is futile and impossible to ponder human being in general-the being of the human species-since my understanding of, and my relation to, my own being always intrudes into any reflection about the being of the human species. There is only one way of comprehending man's being there, and that is by way of inspecting my own being. (Kosinski 1992b, 157)

Kosinski also called Being There "a very Heschelian novel" (Leiderman 1993, 220). There is no evidence that Kosinski read David H. Hirsch's The Deconstruction of Literature which blasts Heidegger as "part of the ideational context . . . that led to Auschwitz" (1991, 19). We should take the title Being There as an admixture of components, then, while realizing that Kosinski regarded himself as "a perfect storyteller, a storyteller that tells a story in a language which evokes no emotion" (Kosinski, Katherina 2002a)3 but which, I assert, invites meaningful participation.

In 1971 when the Times of London named Being There "the book of the year," Peter Sellers contacted Kosinski, pretending to be the real Chauncey Gardiner and demanding restitution (Kosinski 1993c, 190). For the next seven or nine years, depending on which Kosinski story one chooses to cite, Sellers encouraged Kosinski to transform the novel into a movie, starring himself, of course. At first skeptical, the author became convinced of "Clouseau's" being able to portray Chance. Kosinski explained:

I asked Peter, "How would you portray Chauncey Gardiner?" . . . And Sellers said, "I would not act him. . . . I would be myself". . . I said, "All right, show me." And so he did. He picked up the water hose, and I have never seen anyone picking up anything as calmly, as purely, and [with] no anxiety. . . . He became pure, and I said to myself, Kosinski stay away from casting, you know nothing about it. (Kosinski, Katherina 2003)4

Granted complete control over the script, Kosinski eventually agreed. The resulting film, directed by Hal Ashby and starring Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, and Melvyn Douglas, won the British Film Critics Award for best film of 1980, best actor awards for Sellers from the National Board of Review and the Golden Globe, and an Oscar for Melvyn Douglas, in competition with Robert Duval for Apocalypse Now. The performances are superb, and many critics regard this as Sellers's best work (it was his last film.) Released during the 1980 presidential primaries, Kosinski's piece achieved a political relevance which surely added to its critical and public success.

Twenty-three years later, Kosinski's criticisms of television and the videot culture may seem thin in light of some quality programming as well as the increasing importance of the Internet in our lives, but when one considers its historical context, the movie still resonates.

Filmed in Washington, D. C., and at the Biltmore mansion in North Carolina, the cinematic version attains a visual impact which supersedes the novel's brief descriptions and is, artistically, the stronger work. Kosinski obviously departed from his usual refusal to delimit specifics when the genre shifted to the visual. (In his youth, Kosinski won awards as a photographer, and the medium remained an avocation throughout his life.)