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Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

richard fariña thomas pynchon

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A witty, psychedelic, and telling novel of the 1960s

Richard Fariña evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily, and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age. The hero, Gnossus Pappadopoulis, weaves his way through the psychedelic landscape, encountering-among other things-mescaline, women, art, gluttony, falsehood, science, prayer, and, occasionally, truth.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 28,1966

This edition

Format
352 pages, Paperback
Published
May 1, 1996 by Penguin Classics
ISBN
9780140189308
ASIN
0140189300
Language
English

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About the author

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richard fariña

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Richard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger.
With an Irish mother and a Cuban father, Farina was born a rebel. He grew up in Brooklyn, pre-revolutionary Cuba and Ireland. At 18 he was associated with members of the IRA, and was asked to leave Ireland. At Cornell University in the late fifties Farina was suspended for his part in a student protest, but was promptly reinstated when fellow students threatened to take further action to support him.
Leaving Cornell in 1959, he lived in Paris and London, surviving by 'music, street-singing, scriptwriting, acting, a little smuggling, anything to hang on'. In 1963 he returned to America and married Mimi Baez, sister of Joan, and they became a folk duo. Their debut album was recommended by the New York Times as one of the ten best releases of 1965.
Farina was killed in a motorbike accident, just two days after his book Been Down so Long It Looks Like Up to Me had been published. The book has become a cult classic among fans of the 1960s and counterculture literature. The novel also had a huge influence on his close friend Thomas Pynchon, who later dedicated his book Gravity's Rainbow (1973) to Fariña

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
_Hentai_Prince_
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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I was primed to like this being a fan of Richard&Mimi's music, captivated by what I learned in Positively 4th St: the novel about the couple, Bob Dylan&Joan Baez, and of course his association with Tommy P.

such a sucker for the tragic myth&romance swirling around the book&its author AND regarding the book's content which I should get into. great storytelling. so many great scenes, evocatively, sensorily, rendered. great characters. great writing if often ridiculous: trippy 60s, beat, hippie vibe. I dig it, I dig. poetic/cryptic. the search for meaning is not dated if the desire for gurus mostly is. it was more sinister&pessimistic than I anticipated. I laughed out loud a few times.

weirdly maybe I was reminded of how the character Augie March, like Gnossos, (if fairly different, still) is an appealing, attractive character whom everyone seems to want on their side, have a little possession over. both characters reject and suss out others' b.s.

of course Pynchon's intro is lovely. he gives the Cornell backstory to the story with perspective on the times. he delivers a spoiler, be warned.

Now I want to read Warlock!
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ShoujoAiHentai
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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One of the strangest books I've ever read, a bizarre and perverse adaptation of the Odyssey; complete with a giant turd in the narrative, it's an indictment of the counterculture of the 1960s, a response against academia and prestigious schools, and of course, set amidst the backdrop of Cornell University and Cuba, both places that Mr Farina was familiar with.

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BasNieuweboer
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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My friend John Jay suggested this to me. It was a very rich book. It was like taking a peek into someone's interesting college life back in the day. I think it's too bad that Richard Farina died before he had a chance to give us any more of his wonderful books. I think he could have really done something.
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raffyreviews
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Like, I imagine, many people who read this book, I picked it up because Thomas Pynchon dedicated Gravity’s Rainbow to its author and, when I looked him up on the Internet, it seemed he was an interesting character and it might be worth reading a book by him. The fact that this was his first novel and that he was killed in a motorcycle accident just two days after its publication just adds to the mystery and myth that surrounds Farina.

But, if truth be told, this book has little to recommend it to anyone other than students of the Sixties. The book cover states: Richard Farina evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age”. That might well be the case (I was only 5 years old when the book was published and only 9 years old when the Sixties turned into the Seventies, so I can’t really comment), although somehow I doubt it: the writing isn’t great (I cannot see how some people came up with a theory that Farina and Pynchon are/were the same person) and the story isn’t actually all that interesting.

Interestingly, the book cover also says the book as Thomas Pynchon writes in the introduction, "comes on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch." I’ve read the introduction twice including once as a web version I found where I could use the text search option, and I can tell you he doesn’t say that (I believe he may have said it on the dust jacket of one edition, but certainly not in the introduction included in this edition).

So, not a complete waste of time (the section with the wolf story redeems it a bit), but 1.5 stars rounded up to 2.
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decayingwill
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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I read this in college. I practically stayed up all night to finish it. I really loved it. It's not a book everyone would love, but I did.
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LilPrinceein
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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This is the worst book I have ever read. Yes, it's trippy, but it's also sexist as hell, sensationalist, and extremely pretentious -- in both style and matter. It's counter-culture in all the stupid ways -- oooh, drug-taking is awesommmmeeee man -- and not critical of the protagonist, whose name actually means "knowledge," as he acts on the same base prejudices that make mainstream culture so rotten. A hands-down trash book.
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TheAnimeFilms
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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To understand why I wanted to like this book badly, the following information is of interest; Richard Farina was not only the husband of Mimi Baez, the younger sister of Joan Baez, a close friend of Bob Dylan and a heavy drinker, he also died very early in a motorcycle accident. His novel is considered as beat literature, which earned my attention and the title of his book (after a jazz song I can’t remember rn) is brilliant.

Nonetheless I had my problems getting through the book. Farinas writing style is mesmerizing - catching and unpredictable. If you’re looking for a book that has bukowski’s brutal dirty honesty and kerouacs jazzy prose you better call Farina.

But beware of the misogyny between his lines and gnossos - the absolute insufferable main character. whenever I had a little empathy for him, he destroyed it with his nasty attitude and this way it's almost impossible to have any feelings other than contempt for this asshole.

The other thing is that his book lacks depth - you think a book full of university students should lead to meaningful conversations and complex thoughts? Whenever gnossos had a train of thoughts that was worth listening to, it got wrecked by meaningless blah blah about turning on women.

But to come back to the misogyny; the whole pitch of the story is the strict rules of the university regiment not allowing woman to be out after 11pm. gnossos and his friends are determined in planning a revolution; free the girls from curfew! feministic, a few would think. heroes, I thought. So how can a story that has such a good base to be feministic and heroic become misogyn after all?

The book had so much potential in its themes and atmosphere. I wanted to like Farinas book so bad because it was the first and only novel but I still hold up some hope for his poems.
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