[1] 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.

It has been suggested that Kosinski modeled the character of Chance after a former greenhouse manager named Jerry Jarvis who became the national leader of the transcendental meditation movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s,[2] whom Kosinski had met at the local TM Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who embodied the calm and simple manner of Chauncey Gardiner.

[3] The Cambridge TM Center was for years located at the corner of Chauncy and Garden Streets.

While crossing the street, he is struck and slightly injured by a limousine owned by the elderly and terminally ill Benjamin Rand, a retired senior executive.

"), who was riding in the car at the time, insists that he be treated by her husband’s doctor, and convalesce at their luxurious home.

Chance possesses only scanty information picked up from TV, but his naïve and sometimes disconnected responses to questions and conversation are interpreted as oracular by his hearers, who seemingly go out of their way to provide context and ulterior meaning to his statements.

Finally, it is suggested that with his lack of "history", he is an ideal candidate for high office, possibly the Vice-Presidency (though this is not stated explicitly).

When Kosinski published Being There, professor Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska wrote, "most Polish critics immediately recognized [his book] as a version of Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy (The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma) by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz, a novel from the interwar period, and Kosinski was accused of plagiarism".