When I read that Pynchon was best buds with Fariña and that this novel had a setting at Cornell, I was interested. However much Pynchon loved the guy, this is not particularly good writing. Think the drugs are a little harder to work around for some folks. Fariña was lucky that he had a great, nourishing friendship in a gorgeous, bucolic setting. His immortality is not guaranteed with this work.

Sadly, Farina died in a motorcycle crash coming home from a book signing for this, his only major work. Married to Mimi Baez, Farina was also a member of the NYC folk scene...

Like a clown on acid reciting Dylan Thomas with perfect clarity and rhythm, this book is witty, outrageous, engrossing, and beautiful all at once. The characters are unique and provocative and the story is captivating to the point of addiction. An unbelievable first work, as well as a tragic last. This book is worthy of multiple reads, and one I will not soon part with.

Wow - although this is a novel containing language and behaviour that locks it to a particular time and place (as intended), there are more universal themes and symbols present that make it timeless. There is enough to puzzle over that it feels like a few novels in one (apparently a common "mistake" when writing your first novel) and I felt like starting right at the beginning again and soaking them all in (but since no one has time for that anymore, including me, read the excellent essay here[0]).

The introduction by Pynchon is a huge clue to either read it or stay away, based on whether you like his writing or not. Besides the literary reasons, it's got laughs, loads of '50s lingo (which is great at first, then gets tiring, then it gets great again), parties, drugs, revolutions, and some magical realism thrown in for good measure. It's got its faults but I think it makes up for them enough in richness to give it 5 stars.

[0] http://www.richardandmimi.com/beendow...

It reads like every psychedelic rock song of the era - "Tomorrow Never Knows," "Rainy Day Women Numbers 12 & 35," "She's A Rainbow," etc. - played endlessly on a loop until you cannot tell whether you're high or have a headache.

From an intellectual and historical perspective, I admire Farina's gift for writing and respect his story's place in hippie history. Many of the moments are as lyrical as the title, and I can imagine how radical if not first-of-its-kind the topics must have seemed to a reader in 1966. But in 2010, its beatnik battlecry is far too dated.

While ultimately calling for a sexual revolution, the men view the women they know personally either as opaque obstacles or shining accessories to which they are entitled. The protagonist does not treat one single female with any degree of respect let alone tenderness, and is often downright abusive. Misogynistic paranoia is not radical, and nowhere are the reasons for its persistence explained but for the protagonist's central belief in his radical Exemption. Having met one too many real-life college boys convinced of their own Exemption, said state of mind strikes me as an adolescent phase no more radical than having an STD.

Wow. What a coincidence. Had I not read Venus in Furs at nearly the same time as this book, I might have completely missed the connection. Papadopolis - Pappadopoulis. This gives Farina's book a completely different meaning. It's like Venus in Furs inverted.

There's a lot more to this book than meets the eye. This is definitely one of those books that you can reread, one of those books where you can always discover new meaning.

I would like to think that attitudes have evolved since this book first appeared in 1966. Certainly I would like to think my own have evolved since I first read it decades ago. Re-reading it now, it is as misogynistic as I remember.

So why did I re-read it in 2018, while the #MeToo movement continues to make the news? Partly for Thomas Pynchon's introduction to the novel, and partly for the pleasure of Farina's style. Like much of Pynchon's work, Farina's writing here is a poetry of hip (for 1966) cultural references, college humor and Zen monk clowning. But in order to enjoy the text on this level, you have to be able to disentangle it from the more repellent parts of the plot. So it is like reading Lolita. Perhaps a better comparison could be made to watching Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, where you can enjoy the technical mastery of the cinematography and editing while disagreeing with everything you are seeing on the screen.

Still interested? With all its sex, recreational drug use and destructive pranks Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is like an edgier, darker Animal House. The protagonist, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, is a hippie Zorba and a spirit of anarchy not unlike Dean Moriarty (On the Road) or Randall McMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).

Acquired Summer 1983
Classics Book Shop, Montreal, Quebec

Very funny book of shenanigans which take place in Ithaca, New York on Cornell campus and around Ithaca. Lots of interested/weird characters woven throughout book. Extremely talented writer who died in a motorcycle crash and who would have written many more gems if he'd lived.

Loved it back in the day...now at the other end of life, I still love it.

In a strange way this book changed my life. Before I read it, I'm not sure that books quite like it were allowed to exist. Captures a certain 1960s mindset.

My favorite novel.

This needs to be read more. Pynchon's intro was perfect and poignant. Perfectly worthy of that dedication in the start of Gravity's Rainbow.