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Being There

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About this listen

Audie Award Nominee, Best Solo Narration, 2013

Jerzy Kosinski’s clever parable of a naive man thrust into the modern world is more pointed now than ever. Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man, The Graduate), perhaps best known for his portrayals of vulnerable characters and antiheroes, gives an understated and exemplary performance of this satiric look at the unreality of American media culture.

Chance, the enigmatic gardener, becomes Chauncey Gardiner after getting hit by a limo belonging to a Wall Street tycoon. The whirlwind that follows brings Chance to his new status of political policy advisor and possible vice presidential candidate. His garden-variety political responses, inspired by television, become heralded as visionary, and he is soon a media icon due to his unknown background and vague, yet appealing, conversational nature. Being There was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, starring Peter Sellers as Chance, in 1979.

©1971 Jerzy Kosinski (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Political Satire Comedy

Critic reviews

"Dustin Hoffman's performance of this spare and provocative novel is a revelation. The story is surreal (though certainly not difficult and certainly highly amusing); to deliver it, what is needed is not pacing or vocal pyrotechnics but a thorough, thoughtful understanding of the text and the restraint to perform only exactly what is there." (AudioFile)
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Dustin Hoffman is a brilliant narrator, I picked this book because of him really. I enjoyed it nevertheless.

Liked it :)

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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I'd never read any Kosinski before and only bought this book as I'm a fan of Dustin Hoffman. As you'd expect from such an accomplished actor, Hoffman's narration is superb; I'd have him read all my books to me if I could! What came as a pleasant surprise, though, was that the story was as good as the performance. It's a really touching, funny story and my only complaint would be that there wasn't enough of it. It could have been twice as long and I still wouldn't have wanted it to end. I would definitely recommend it to a friend.

An excellent little book

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Dustin Hoffman is a master storyteller with that voice. I got very immersed in this one, it was just so easy with the simple, but somehow powerful, way this story is told. Five starts all round, writer and performer!

Just Excellent

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I loved Dustin Hoffman's narration. I was amused by how information is ascertained and accepted with corroboration 😆 How easy it seems to re-invent oneself without trying. Thought-provoking wee book.

Short and enjoyable

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at first i couldn't stand the book. but further along i went the better it got, i really enjoyed it.

i liked it

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