I think that you may not appreciate this one unless you've lived on the outskirts of society yourself (and maybe done a few mind-altering drugs too!) It's garbled, but fun to read and remember.

Another one of those misanthropic antiheros I always relate to.

It truly captures one of those unique moments in time that was lost before anybody realized it. Hardly a period of "innocence" though.

I gave up on this book around page 93... Now I picked it up again! Pretty damn hard coasting book. Thomas Pynchon's introduction is the best though. Really wanna read "V" now since it came out in the same period.

This is what On The Road would/could have been if Kerouac had A) been a much better writer, and B) had more complex attitudes about stuff like race and gender. Another winner from Pynchon.

Zippo Bang! Wayward university student Gnossos Pappadopoulis returns to school after an absence that is the subject of many rumors, steals figures from the campus nativity scene, smokes great quantities of marijuana, trips on mescaline, falls in love, incites a campus riot and goes to the Cuban Revolution.

I enjoyed this book so much that I will read it more than once-possibly even annually. My first exposure to this book was in the summer of 1975 when I found it in my big brother's book case. He had a paperback edition from the late 1960s. It had a naked lady on the cover, so, naturally, 12 year old Neil had to skim it in search of sex scenes. Fortunately, the first occurs in the second chapter. Only now I know that "Night in Tunisia" is a jazz composition, not an orgasmic utterance. Richard Farina was familiar to me even then because my big brother had all of his record albums and I had heard his dulcimer cacophony over and over again as a youngster. Recently, my manager, a staid sixty-plus-years-old tax attorney, saw the book on my desk and was very excited. Much to my surprise, he had read it a long time ago. He sang its praises as a great book for charades. According to him, no one can ever guess the title.

Sadly, Richard Farina died shortly after it was published, so we'll never enjoy any more of his storytelling.

Well this book fucked me.

I decided to read it when I came across the title while stalking Thomas Pynchon's very sparse Wikipedia page. Turns out they had been buddies at Cornell and had both started as engineering physics majors and then switched to English. Interesting transition. This was, of course, before Fariña ended up as the poster boy for "Don't-Take-Motorcylce-Rides-From-Strangers-Kids".

The name of the book caught my eye because it reminded me of that Junior Kimbrough song "Most Things Haven't Worked Out". Always think of that picture of him on the album, smoking shirtless, looking real sad. Probably pissed he couldn't have ripped off Cedric Burnside more.

Anyways, the book's main character reminded me an enormous amount of Akshunna. So much so that it was startling, and I felt myself slightly having flashbacks of living with him and always being talked into something dumb. Always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Always slightly in awe of his affected bohemian air.

Anyways anyways, when I started reading I was expecting it to be like Kerouac's On the Road. Which I had read in 10th grade and had my head spinning in circles from all the chaos that I couldn't believe it was based on real events. Back in those naive days.

But this was so much more. I think more than any other book I've read, it nailed the paranoia of being in love, feeling like you're secretly being used. That you're going to find out in the end that it meant nothing to the other person. That all your memories were one sided.

And that's heavy stuff baby. You dig.

Hence. It fucking me up.

Beware the monkey demon (and never EVER use those salad tongs again)!

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is one of those novels like Naked Lunch that seems to have been written in a drug-induced frenzy. Though the word frenzy might suggest speed, it took Richard Fariña over five years to write this book. Sometimes I think that all would be revealed if I got high before reading it, sort of like getting high before a Grateful Dead concert. God knows it drags when you're straight and sober.

The main character, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, has long been cited as the missing link between the beatniks and the hippies. He evolves from beatnik into the original, archetypal hippie. He set out on the road and found nothing but did find the keys to inner enlightenment in the form of hallucinogenic drugs. Whereas the beatniks used drugs to escape reality the hippies used them to transcend reality. But in the end it all amounts to the same thing.

Although it was set in early in 1958 at Cornell, it wasn't published until the spring of 1966. Fariña was ahead of his time and probably couldn't have gotten the book published before that, but the times were changing and rapidly catching up with him. But by the time the world had caught up with him, he was gone, killed in a motorcycle accident two days after the book was published.

His death only contributed to the cult status that the book would achieve, heralded as it was as being the Catcher in the Rye or On the Road of that decade. It might have been different--no, it would have been different if Fariña had lived to write again. In retrospect it would have been a first novel that merely showed promise rather than the voice of a unrealized genius snuffed out in the prime of life. Like James Dean dying at 25 after having made only three movies rather than growing old and bloated like Brando. Fariña is the James Dean of literature, he will always be young and good looking.

Richard Farinña's style is upbeat, frantic, surreal and unpredictable. It actually told a story, had a narrative of some sort, and that was surprising. I overall enjoyed the book, but I am aware that the style is not for everyone. I especially liked it because it has a resonance with my own writing style, this Kerouac-ian adversity to full stops. I admittedly lost track whenever there was a conversation going on in the novel, as Fariña is faithful to the characters egoistic dispositions, and has each character talking about its own thing, a perplexing blurting of ones own needs. A lot of madness, monkey-demons, drugs, backstabbings, but all this without taking the 'realness' out of it. A definite recommend to anyone interested in 60s university life! I quite liked Gnossos too.

If You Can Only Write One Book Before You Die

It should be this one. Fatima died in a motorcycle accident the night of his book celebration, so this is it -- the sole entry in his body of work. But it captures the temper of the times in a visceral way that puts you there, man.

We are cogs in wheels turning in frightening gyres, and this book puts you there with the campus of an Icy League school as the microcosm of a society spinning out of control politically, socially and cosmically.

After attending a book signing party for "Been Down So Long..." Richard Farina climbed onto a guest's motorcycle to attend his wife's birthday party, but he was killed in an accident before arriving. Though his wife had been upset with him at the signing because he had failed to get her a present, she returned home days after his death to find the apart they had shared filled with flowers he'd arranged to have delivered.
Much like these forgotten blooms, Farina's sole novel should be considered precious. Friends of Thomas Pynchon and Bob Dylan, a patron of the White Horse and protest folk singer, married to Joan Baez's sister, Farina was entrenched in 1960's New York bohemian and beat scene. It is this that lends a certain authenticity to his caricature as character, Gnossos Pappadopoulis.
Gnossos is a controversial, bombastic, drug-addled dreamer, hip to the point of modern myth amongst his peers and at the same time, utterly peerless. He becomes entangled with political protest groups, dope pushers, spacey neighbors, and one certain femme fatale, and Farina takes us along for the ride. The result is a comic trip and shimmering, secret, psychedelic gem. Not as well known as the work of Farina's counterparts, "Been Down So Long" waits patiently to be discovered, much like the blossoms he'd seemingly sent to Mimi from beyond the grave. It is by turns outrageous and brilliant, and Gnossos is as frustrating and awful as he is lovable, surrounded by a cast of mad geniuses and impassioned coeds.
While "Been Down So Long" is written in a very specific setting, the larger picture it creates is one of youth desperately searching for meaning in a possibly random world. Of course, it is not the only novel to explore this, but it deserves a place alongside the greatest of its ilk. It's hard to say what Farina might have added to his legacy had he not met his end so prematurely, but if "Been Down" is a true indicator of his talent, it makes his passing all the more tragic.

At times incredibly poetic, but also often reads like a first novel (which it is). An intriguing book on youthful intensity and energy set in the sixties.