from the house. He went outside and started to walk down the street when a car belonging to Elizabeth Eve Rand hit him. Elizabeth Eve, or EE, was married to one of the richest men in America and the confidant of presidents. The Rands took Chance into their home where they misheard his name as Chauncey Gardiner. When Chance was asked about his past, he described the only thing he was able to describe. This was the garden where he worked his whole life. Everyone took what he said as a metaphor. As Mr. Rand was dying, chance accompanied EE to a diplomatic reception where his comments were taken as sage commentary. He was invited to appear in a nationwide television show where his garden metaphor reassures the public in a moment of financial crisis. By the end of the book, important power brokers propose Chance as a candidate for vice president. Kosinski got his idea for Being There in the summer of 1965. His wife Mary took him along to a townhouse in Manhattan to visit a man in his eighties who owned a lot of first-rate old American furniture. Marys mission was to convince the man to will his furniture to the Metropolitan Museum. When Mary went upstairs to see the old man, Kosinski looked around the downstairs of the townhouse. He found a passageway that led to a beautiful garden in the back which was set off from the street by a high wall. In the garden was a well-dressed, middle-aged man who watched a television that could be seen from a window as he spoke to Kosinski. A few days later, Kosinski ran into the lawyer who was handling the old mans estate and had arranged for Marys visit. The Lawyer at first couldnt recall a man working in the garden and when he did he said that he didnt know his name or anything else about him except that he had lived in the house his entire life. This man became Chance the Gardener in Kosinski s third novel. (JK; pg. 201) It seems from the surface that the mentally challenged Chance has no re...
