Kosinskis Being There and the Existential Anti-Hero...

Kosinskis Being There and the Existential Anti-Hero Critics have referred to Kosinskis Being There as his worst novel. Perhaps, Kosinskis prosaic style is deceptive in its apparent simplicity (especially when contrasted with The Painted Bird). What Kosinski seeks to do, as Welch D. Everman relates, is to stimulate the readers recreative and imaginative task by offering only the essentials...Kosinskis style draws the reader into the incident by refusing to allow him to remain passive (25). This essay will propose that Being There is a major existential work following in the tradition of Sartre and Camus in which Chance, the main protagonist, mirrors Camuss Mersault in A Happy Death and in which Koskinski demonstrates†¦show more content†¦Chance has been given his name because he had been born by chance, yet as Everman shows, this is true of everyone, and so his given name is hardly a name at all....In addition, he loses this rather tenuous name early in the book... and therefore is without a real name (63). Furthermore, no one in the book exists without some type of tangible record proving existence. When Mr. Franklin, the Old Mans executor, interrogates Chance, he seeks commodified proof of Chances existence; he asks for, among other items, a checkbook, drivers license, insurance card, tax forms. Chance, encountering the existential dilemma, the quest for identity, counters: you have me. I am here. What more proof do you need (18)? Of course, mere existence proves useless and Chance is excommunicated from his beloved garden. Why does a writer who displays such brilliant technical skills and prosaic style resort to utilizing such a one dimensional character? Perhaps Koskinski has simply found the next logical step in the chain of psychological evolution. Yet, rather than the natural heir to Benji Compson, Chance is, instead, the natural descendent of Patrice Mersault. After Nietzsche declared God dead, we spent the next half century in an angst ridden frenzy. Sartre, Beckett, and Camus best exemplify this condition in their writings. Camuss Mersualt (perhaps the predecessor to