About this title: Chauncey Gardner is a pleasant, dim-witted nobody who becomes a media celebrity, rising to prominence for no particular reason. Kosinsky's classic satire of the power of the media--and especially television--was made into an Oscar-winning movie in 1979.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780553232462ISBN:0553232460
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. Totally clean and unmarked inside & out. Printer cut book at a slight angle so that print appears slightly crooked on the page. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780553279306ISBN:0553279300
Description: Good. 0.7 x 6.7 x 4.1 Inches; 128 pages; Chauncey Gardiner is the great enigma: Â Â a hero of the American media. Â Â TV loves him; print pursues him. Â Â He is a household face. Â Â He is the one everybody is talking about, though nobody knows what HE is talking about. Â Â No one knows where he has come from, but everybody knows he has come to money, power and sex. Â Â Was he led to all this by the lovely, well-connected wife of a dying Wall Street tycoon? Â Â Or is Chauncey Gardiner riding ... read more
Description: Acceptable. MAY HAVE COVER WEAR, SPINE CREASES, HIGHLIGHTING, UNDERLINING & PAGES YELLOWED FROM AGE. FASTER SERVICE FROM US! ! ! read more
"Loaned to me by my 12th grade English teacher, an amusing tale of an innocent seen by the eyes of those projecting themselves. Made into the Peter Sellers movie several years later, whose screenplay version was very close to the the novel."
"In High School I had to read this book as an assignment. I have never been forced to read something so foul and immoral. This book was so disgusting that my teacher would recommend skipping over certain sections of the book because of the graphic contents."
"So, there was a German film in the mid-1970s, a Werner Herzog-directed movie of cult status titled, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, based supposedly on a true incident from hundreds of years ago in which a man, a kind of idiot, suddenly appeared in a town and his origins remained a mystery. In the film, Hauser is shown to be raised in a dark, prison-like condition, cut off completely from the ways of the world and socialization. Raised like some factory farm animal. Then one day his caretaker dies and he is released to the world, entirely ignorant. Goes into a village where his mysterious presence asserts a strange magic over the townsfolk all the way up to the leadership, including the mayor. Things are attributed to him that have no bearing in reality. People chose to see him as they will, to suit their own ends. But such enigma can attract power and cult and threaten the powerful and status quo. Hauser comes to be regarded as a nuisance to be gotten rid of... There are all kinds of parallel parables to that story: The story of Christ being one, but a lot of satires (screwball movie comedies of the '30s and old stage farces up to today's movies) have rehashed this idea: the dumb guy thrust into society and taken for something more than he is. So the idea for Kosinski's famous novel is not exactly original.
The good news is: it's a delightful little book, a clever story. Simple, fast-moving, not always entirely convincing, but mostly on-target.
The 1979 film adaptation with Peter Sellers certainly equals it, and maybe even surpasses it. It has to be one of the best and most faithful movie adaptations of a novel ever.
So I laughed several times at the ways in which the power elites misinterpret Chauncey Gardiner's simplistic, straightforward accounts of gardening as metaphors for the vagaries of business and politics.
The story is fairly well known: an anonymous nobody raised inside the walls of a house and garden, who knows nothing but gardening and whose socialization comes entirely from lifelong TV watching, is suddenly thrust into the world and through a mishap and a few well-timed but misinterpreted quotes becomes a confidante of the powerful, and a media sensation. People read into him their own agendas and desires. And, as he says, he just likes to watch. Watches it all happen as they write on his blank slate.
It's not a great novel, but as I say it's a fun story, done with dispatch."
"My dad recommended this to me a few years back. I think I was 13 at the time, so a little over five years ago. I should've said several, not few. Ah well. Time sure flies, eh?
My dad first read Being There when he was a sophomore at Princeton in 1980. Times were different then. Rampant casual sex, excessive drug usage, political upheaval, floundering economy... etc. Hey, wait a minute, that sounds familiar...
But I digress.
My dad has certainly given me a lot of good advice over the years--I'm not sure I would have learned not to take amphetamines in Italy on my own*.
My father is certainly an interesting fellow: brilliant, athletic and a man of the world. He can lecture you for hours on subjects ranging from combinatorial topology to acquiring the best Moroccan hash.*
Kosinsky seemed to capture some of that youthful arrogance in this novel. The kids absolutely devoured it. And understandably, my father and his peers were smitten... stay tuned, folks. I'm wayyyy too lazy to finish this review right now."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
