A book a day: Jerzy Kosinski: From the garden

Original language: English

Original title: Being There

Year of publication: 1970

Translation: Nelly Cacici

Valuation: can be read

From the Garden, by the Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosinski and a famous novel, especially due to the success of its film adaptation (starring Peter Sellers), is based on an ingenious idea, undoubtedly at the time, more than 50 years ago. years, but I’m afraid that today it sounds more than hackneyed: Chance, a guy who since he was a child has lived locked up in an old rich man’s mansion, taking care of his garden (what is called child kidnapping and slavery, wow) and with no more knowledge of the outside world than what comes to him through television, he finds himself thrown, from one day to the next, into that world that he almost doesn’t know and with one hand in front and one behind…

However, by a truly very random chance Chance enters into a relationship with the North American and even world financial and political elite, among whom, thanks to his simple comments, his good appearance and, above all, his laconicism that gives him an aura of intelligence, he is considered by everyone to be a great man and even a guru in economic matters. All without him ever knowing where the air is coming from, not even when it comes to more intimate matters – in fact, a couple of rather funny erotic scenes are described due to certain misunderstandings; Such naivety, not to say stupidity, could seem implausible, if it weren’t for the fact that we are already used to seeing how people achieve success who seem simpler than a carrycot (that, or they are directly disturbed: here we have a former president of USA that can repeat in office, of which we do not know if it turns out to be more scoundrel than megalomaniac or vice versa, a president of Argentina who talks to his dead dog and compares himself to Wolverine… or, without Go further, to a president of the Spanish autonomous community who is clearly out of her mind and whose vocation as a fruit seller has not prevented her from surrounding herself with chorizos…).

Thus, the novel can be read as an ironic renewal of Plato’s cave myth or that of the noble savage. Even, if you will, the story of the naked king to whom only a child dared to tell the truth. Because, even though we find some more humorous and/or bad-tempered moments, in general the book is still an elongated story in which even the simple style used is somewhat reminiscent of children’s stories. Which, surely, was the author’s intention and it has been well achieved, although, at this point in my reading life, the result has been a bit meager and, as I have already mentioned, a bit hackneyed. I can understand the enthusiasm this story caused when it appeared, in the middle of the era hippy, but not the one that, apparently, still awakens in some readers. Hence my assessment, which may perhaps seem a bit harsh, although, in 2024, I believe it is quite fair.

Other titles by this writer reviewed in A Book Al Día: The Painted Bird, Steps