Being There (novel)
Being There is a satirical novel by the Polish-born writer Jerzy Kosinski, published in 1970. 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.
A film based on the book was made in 1979; Kosinski co-wrote the film's screenplay with Robert C. Jones.Background
When Jerzy Kosinski published Being There, wrote historian Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, "most Polish critics immediately recognized his book as a version of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz, a novel from the interwar period, and Kosinski was accused of plagiarism", 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.
