Introduced by Mia Amato Mia Amato writes the column "Yardscapes" in the San Francisco Examiner, and is a University of California Master Gardener. Peter Sellers' Candide-like Chance the Gardener has spent his life cultivating the small garden of his elderly benefactor; apart from that, he has absorbed all he knows from watching television, from the morning kiddie shows to the evening news. His circumscribed, seemingly Edenic universe is actually the perfect simulation of The Box itself: this ET-like character can't be innocent, because television has made him in its image. Let loose upon the world, the insubstantial man who "likes to watch" is mistaken for a seer, his horticultural homilies taken for profound metaphors by politicians whose Morning-in-America ends they serve beautifully. Thus is the political career of Chauncy Gardiner launched. Jerzy Kosinski's acidic fable hedges the limits of cultivating one's own garden; the implication that the White House may evolve into The Gardening Channel is almost too cynical to be believed.