Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me

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Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me

by Richard Fariña, Thomas Pynchon (Introduction)

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 1,203 ratings · 129 reviews

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. A portrait of an explosive decade, sparkling with inventive wri...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published May 1st 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published April 1966)

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Jan 07, 2013 Madeleine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, mmxii

There are two big things this book had working in its favor before I even cracked open Richard Fariña's under-appreciated final gem: The Pynchon connection (which is was what nudged me in the direction of this novel in the first place, albeit more than a year after "Gravity's Rainbow" mournfully introduced me to Fariña) and my own probably-over-romanticized-at-this-point affinity for my college experience, with Pynchon's intro (which includes an obligatory kazoo-choir reference!) being, of cours...more There are two big things this book had working in its favor before I even cracked open Richard Fariña's under-appreciated final gem: The Pynchon connection (which is was what nudged me in the direction of this novel in the first place, albeit more than a year after "Gravity's Rainbow" mournfully introduced me to Fariña) and my own probably-over-romanticized-at-this-point affinity for my college experience, with Pynchon's intro (which includes an obligatory kazoo-choir reference!) being, of course, a voyeuristic delight of the highest order right until the moment it crashed back to heartbreaking reality and the novel's not-entirely-fictitious collegiate antics serving as a not-entirely-unpleasant reminder of why I was so reluctant to let go of college life.

And then, during the year's last handful of blessedly slow days at the Crappiest Place on Earth, I discovered that actually taking my lunch hour to hunker shoelessly down in the backseat of my car with a blanket and a book is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to my ~~sanity~~ professional life. Observe the photographic proof of my sublime on-the-clock refuge:

(Thank bouncing Baby Jesus that Fariña's Cornell chum desensitized me to complex equations interrupting literature.)

So now a novel that was published two days before its author's far-too-early death has found an even fonder association in my own personal landscape, thanks to my unyielding dissatisfaction with and need to escape from a job that takes me farther and farther from where I wanted to be at this point in my life.

I am so glad that I read this book now, rather than as a starry-eyed undergrad with dreams of running the NYT and writing The Greatest American Novel of My Generation on the side. I have a better sense of how life is not something that can be planned for, that growing up is fucking hard even with a willingness to let one's inner child have a say every now and again, that death is always lurking around every corner, and coming to this novel without even one of those hard lessons under my belt would have reduced this from a poignantly frenzied love song of youth's last discoveries to an instruction manual for college kids who just want to shake things up (not that there's anything inherently wrong with living in the moment and taking inconsequentially stupid chances, for those are the backbone of the best Hey, Remember When...? tales). I absolutely would have embraced any opportunity to cause a scene at a formal frathouse dinner like Gnossos Pappadopoulis (Fariña's thinly veiled stand-in for himself) did, just as I had also proclaimed myself in love with wrong guy after wrong guy based on a series of limited-engagement liaisons, as Gnossos did with Kristin, his obsession in green knee-socks and loafers.

My tendency to relate too personally with literary characters came out to play for keeps as Gnossos became a clearer and clearer picture; save for a few lapses into first-person narration, this is a story told mostly in third-person with a focus on GP, so it takes some time to get a sense of his motivation and how others perceive him (it takes a little longer to reconcile the two seemingly at-odds realities). And perhaps I was imposing my own inner workings on Gnossos but I left this book with a sense of awed kinship inspired by his mostly successful attempts to hide his soft heart under an ornery facade. He wants to feel, he wants to live, he wants to be earnest in his devil-may-care approach to throwing himself into living but he is woefully, painfully afraid of doing so because fully embracing life means also acknowledging that death is the inevitable end game.

Gnossos seems like the kind of maniac ringleader whose enthusiasm and passion attract unresisting friends and followers in droves but his attitude obscures a desperate desire to fall in love rather than indulge in a series of unemotional physical encounters, which is what it seems will finally help him stop fighting thanathos with an unequivocally driving life force. Had I not read Pynchon's "Entropy" in college, I would have probably missed the significance of how Gnossos has hermetically sealed himself inside every room he occupies in an attempt to artificially preserve life against the natural encroachment of death -- until his night with Kristin has him throwing open windows with the zeal of a man possessed. He is a character who fights the unpleasant reality with the much more pleasing act of losing oneself in the moment and clinging to that happiness as if that's all it takes to preserve that joy for eternity. As his attempts at pleasant stasis become more desperate and he loses control over situations that initially plopped him on top of the world, it becomes more obvious that this is a guy who wants freedom without responsibility -- and, in the end, isn't that what college is all about?

It's Bukowski once you've swapped the booze for drugs. It's Hunter S. Thompson with an overt awareness that death is nipping at his heels. It's Kerouac as a college kid. It's Pynchon with narrative restraint. But most of all, it's both proof that Fariña's early death was a huge loss to the literary world and a tribute to a screamingly talented artist who knew how to find the biggest truths in the smallest moments while laughing and kicking death in the ass. Because as much as Gnossos (and, presumably, Fariña) feared death, his ability to suck the marrow from every moment is the ultimate victory of life.(less)

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Jul 05, 2008 Jesse rated it 5 of 5 stars

Richard Farina is something of a role model to me. If I could model my life after his I would - all except the dying in a motorcycle accident two days after my first novel is published. But besides this I would like to:

1. release acoustic driven music with my beautiful girlfriend/wife

2. Publish a novel centered around a smooth-talking, fast-living, drug-ingesting protagonist named Gnossos (yes, that's right his name is Gnossos and you don't even wanna know his last name)

3. Participate in campus...more Richard Farina is something of a role model to me. If I could model my life after his I would - all except the dying in a motorcycle accident two days after my first novel is published. But besides this I would like to:

1. release acoustic driven music with my beautiful girlfriend/wife

2. Publish a novel centered around a smooth-talking, fast-living, drug-ingesting protagonist named Gnossos (yes, that's right his name is Gnossos and you don't even wanna know his last name)

3. Participate in campus demonstrations against draconian campus policies.

and 4. Be Thomas Pynchon's best friend and have Gravity's Rainbow dedicated to me; I mean how fuckin' cool would that be.

But all personal coolness aside, "Been Down So Long.." is actually a good novel. While a bit dated (as this was written in the sixties), and a bit misogynistic (he lies about using a contraceptive just so he can get some), the novel is buzzing in style, dripping in a sixties coolness and an extemporaneous desire for change. Gnossos, while sometimes loathsome, is also entertaining to be around. This is not a novel I would recommend to most women; they might like it if they are into Bukowski or something similar, but most probably will not. I think I like the novel more than I think it is actually good. When I picked it up the title struck me as something so modern, like the title of some indie rock band's second album, and when I read the first chapter it was written with such verve and humour that it immediately had me hooked. More so than that the ending threw me for a loop and showed me that this was more than an "On The Road" wanderlust excuse to drink and take drugs (although there is a rather large element of that) But more so it was about the effects of trying to maintain a detached cool in the midst of so much cultural change; and even more universal than that, it's about trying to go through life and never be embarrased or made foolish, and only portray the most laid-back, witty, and insouciant calm that no real person actually has. And, of course, anyone who drinks, takes drugs, lies and sleeps around is the complete opposite of these things; he's an insecure man who has been down so long that it starts looking like up.(less)

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Nov 05, 2008 oriana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: formative-reading, read-2008

after: This past summer I went to a 'Summer of Love' exhibit at, um, MoMA I think. I actually found it really confusing and depressing. Not because the art was bad; it was great. But everything felt really silly to me, really overdone and clichéd. But here's the thing: none of that stuff was clichéd; it's just that every freaking thing that's been done since ripped it off, and so even the originals have been (in my mind, anyway) devalued through too-much-ness. If that makes any sense.

And so it i...more

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Jun 01, 2007 Ryan Chapman rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Probably nobody

Shelves: fiction, desertislandpicks

This is my hands-down, desert-island favorite novel, and like all favorite novels, my own adoration is rooted in such particular tastes I understand why very few of my friends like the book.

Farina was a successful folk musician, playing with his wife Mimi Baez and touring with Bob Dylan and her sister Joan in the 60s. The Cuban-Irish author was also a published poet, and wasn't known for his fiction until this novel, his first and last. Three days after its publication, Farina was killed in a m...more

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Jun 22, 2008 John rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: College guys

I am convinced that Farina could have become a really good novelist. However, his first and only outing has many shortcomings. Farina has a very unique writing style, not unlike Pynchon, except whereas Pynchon writes about rockets and science, Farina writes about drugs, women, and Greek food. He has an entertaining shwagger in his writing style, but I constantly felt that parts and stylings were contrived and awkward. He tries too hard appealing to ambiguity, and it leaves a lot of plot confusio...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Spotsalots added it

Shelves: fiction

I read this in the spring, when various things were going on that delayed my finishing it or writing about it, so my comments cannot be as specific as if I had just read it.

A few things stick out to me: when in the midst of it (usually on an airplane), I was immersed in it. It kept me reading along. Yet as I didn't read it in one fell swoop, I occasionally had trouble keeping track of characters and events. Not major trouble on characters, but some. It's written in an idiosyncratic style that I...more I read this in the spring, when various things were going on that delayed my finishing it or writing about it, so my comments cannot be as specific as if I had just read it.

A few things stick out to me: when in the midst of it (usually on an airplane), I was immersed in it. It kept me reading along. Yet as I didn't read it in one fell swoop, I occasionally had trouble keeping track of characters and events. Not major trouble on characters, but some. It's written in an idiosyncratic style that I recognize as being much like one I developed in my own twenties (long after this was written, but independent of it), somewhat stream of conscious, somewhat poetic, somewhat hermetic, altogether energetic and breathless. I'm still capable of writing like that, but it's no longer suitable for very much of what I write, and so, reading this, I pondered the idea of youthful voice. Few young writers employ a voice anything like this, but for some of us it was just right, conveying our voracious appetite for life and experience. Most of what I write now employs slower, more contemplative voices, which I suppose is suitable to my slower age, but more importantly, I hope suitable to the particular stories and characters I'm working with now.

A thing that really struck me while reading, which hasn't (as far as I can tell) been much addressed by other readers, is the protagonist's astonishingly poor treatment of women. Gnossos is generally described as being much like the author, and both are generally described with admiration. Yet Gnossos basically rapes the British woman whose apartment he takes, and when he finally falls in love, his behavior toward the beloved rapidly becomes abusive and disgusting. Yes, he does think she's turned against him, but he seems to think it's appropriate to treat her very strangely. I might have thought some of his actions amusing when I was 18, but now he just seems like a real jerk, even if a jerk who's interesting to read about.

Much more could be said about the book--and it's well worth reading and thinking about--but I'd have to reread to get further into its prefiguration of the 1960s (and what nonsense that the book jacket talks about it being about the 1960s; it's set in the late 50s, even if a version of the late 50s that has much in common with the mid-late 1960s).(less)

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Apr 04, 2011 Lindsey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: physical-library, read-in-2010

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...more 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.(less)

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Dec 04, 2010 Kirk rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sixties/Beat/youthquake historians

Recommended to Kirk by: some dude trying to sell me weed in 1983 (I didn't buy-promise)

Well, if you ever want proof of how sixties totems don't really age well, this is the book for you. The cult following has been long if somewhat subterranean, its duration due in part to the unfortunate circumstance of its author dying in a motorcycle accident only a couple dozen hours after its publication (and only a few months before the mythological motorcycle accident of Farina's "brother-in-law," Bob Dylan). It also helps your literary endurance to have gone to Cornell with both Thomas Pyn...more Well, if you ever want proof of how sixties totems don't really age well, this is the book for you. The cult following has been long if somewhat subterranean, its duration due in part to the unfortunate circumstance of its author dying in a motorcycle accident only a couple dozen hours after its publication (and only a few months before the mythological motorcycle accident of Farina's "brother-in-law," Bob Dylan). It also helps your literary endurance to have gone to Cornell with both Thomas Pynchon and C. Michael Curtis of Atlantic Monthly fame. Readers will be forgiven for wondering, in fact, if Pynchon didn't have a hand in the book since its manic energy and style are simpatico to both V and The Crying of Lot 49. When I first read this the summer before I went to college (right after the edition with Farina's face on it came out---the new edition with the upside down crotch shot doesn't do much to sell the legend) there were even rumors that Pynchon WAS Farina, or Farina WAS Pynchon. Or something like that. In the end, reading the book is a lot like watching WILD IN THE STREETS or maybe even VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS (best scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy40TT... thanks, MST3K): it's best enjoyed with tongue in cheek. Maybe in the end the important thing this book documents is how the youth rebellion associated with the sixties had a hard time rising about juvenility. (Suffice to say that a moral stand in this plot revolves around flipping off the evil campus VP). All that said, you can still watch clips of the Berkeley Free Speech days and appreciate why aggressive generational politics was necessary back in the day: old people really acted like mean old people before 1966. Nobody above 25 gave two shits about being cool or hip. So the book really captures the late 50s period when weed, premarital sex, and long hair were indeed considered threats to the social order. That makes for an interesting if not always sympathetic document. As many commentators have remarked, rebellion here is a boys club---you can draw a straight line from the humor to Animal House and realize frattiness was in the blood even if you were vehemently anti-frat. Anyway, worth a gander for nostalgia's sake. Farina's musical career is actually more emotionally engaging if you aren't put off by the sort of folk music that prefers dulcimers to acoustic blues noodling and has titles like "Reflections in a Crystal Wind." Personally, I dig it, baby. RF's wife was the gorgeous and highly underestimated Mimi Farina (Joan baez's kid sister). She survived her husband by thirty-five years but still died way too young, nearly a decade ago now.(less)

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Jul 08, 2009 Phil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Pynchon fans

(My how I could ever use a half star... ahem)

This is a really uneven but charming book. That charming part might be a stretch given the amount of drug (ab)use, vulgarity and domestic-flavored violence, but I think it lends a gravity to the book that would be otherwise absent. Oh who am I kidding, drug use and vulgarity are naturally funny, they suck you into a ridiculous world you wish you could be a part of! Ahh, but the escapism is quelched by tragedy, major and minor.

I was gripped by one word...more

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Jul 14, 2008 Mandy rated it 1 of 5 stars

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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Jun 19, 2009 Joe Gola rated it 4 of 5 stars

A promising first novel by a guy who didn't live to write a second. Weird, funny and intense...set in a Northeastern college town in 1958, it chronicles the adventures of larger-than-life hipster iconoclast Gnossos Pappadopoulis, a young man retreating back to school after wandering America and not liking what he found. The prose is thick and ambitious, but also playful and sly, and somehow it all works. While a bit juvenile at times, on a whole the book is deeper and richer than one might expec...more

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Dec 01, 2008 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: folks who like hunter s. thompson

Recommended to Emily by: Ian Sansom

Shelves: for-the-phd, fiction

the day after i first heard of this book, i found it by chance - one of those copies that's been read so many times it's got a hard crease down the centre of it.

mostly i read it for an essay i was working on about riots in fiction, but what with the grand canyon mystery, the ouzo and the slow lazy ceiling fan feel of a stir-crazy university ... yeah, this was pretty damn good.

plus, it's got possibly my favourite unwilling-messiah moment (to top even 'the life of brian', perhaps:

'The phone rang...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Jeff rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 mi...more

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Mar 23, 2010 Marc rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yet another book that got me on the road or led to my staying there for 20 years. Manages to convey very well some of the madness that was myh own life for about the first 18 of those 20 years. Wahoo. Read most of it to Mary, my late wife, when we were engaged, just so she knew what she was getting into. She believed about half of it until...

I had been to San Francisco throughout my road years but had been absent from there for about 20 years. Mary went out for a convention and I joined her at t...more

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Jan 07, 2013 wally rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: farina, favorites, time-passages

1st from fariña for me...paperback...the intro from pynchon...1966...

a dedication: this one is for mimi

this follows:
"i must soon quit the scene..."
benjamin franklin
in a letter to george washington
march 5, 1780

a contents pages...21 chapters...begins:

book the first
to athene then.

young gnossos pappadopoulis, furry pooh bear, keeper of the flame, voyaged back from the asphalt seas of the great wasted land: oh highways u.s. 40 and unyielding 66, i am home to the glacier-gnawed gorges, the fingers of...more

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Apr 04, 2008 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars

A campus novel - a great voice, husband to Mimi (Joan Baez's little sis)and college pal of Pynchon. Great stuff - like a literary animal house, hip, clear-eyed, quick, maybe Kerouac's kid brother - both Ivy League btw.

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Mar 13, 2013 Nick marked it as on-hiatus

Shelves: reviewed

When, halfway through, you put a book down and start to question whether or not you want to pick it back up it is time to consider whether a) this is the wrong book for you, or b) this is the wrong time for you to be reading this book.

There are moments that have made me laugh. Not out-loud laughter, not I-almost-peed laughter (like you would get with a Christopher Moore book), but internal laughter. The kind that brings a smile to your face while inside you're having a little chuckle. The writi...more

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Nov 15, 2010 E rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

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...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Neil rated it 4 of 5 stars

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. H...more

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Sep 12, 2008 Brad Spurgeon rated it 1 of 5 stars

After reading A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch it would be hard to find a book so diametrically opposed in style and in content. I enjoyed the Murdoch so much that getting into this one is more difficult. It too had been sitting on my shelves for decades (it's a fourth printing from Dell, 1968). But the more time I give it, the more rewarding it is becoming. It does strike me as probably being more outrageous at the time it came out than today. Dealing with university students, it's a sort of Brat...more

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Apr 07, 2010 connie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those books i had heard about for years and never read. I like Farina's music and when I was listening to a recording recently, remembered that he had written this book and went to search it out. There were very few characters for whom I was routing. Like some other books I have struggled with, it was not fun to read, but I am glad to have read it. It is an interesting portrait of a time, written in a voice that reflects a side of the 1960s that is truly fascinating..

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Nov 05, 2009 Maggie Campbell rated it 2 of 5 stars

"Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same."

"..you can't go stomping around the country for a year and expect to come back to the same lousy landscape."

"You'll fall by just on the off-chance you'll meet the absolutely A-number-one apocalypticlove of your life, and walk off into a field of cherry blossoms or some shit."

"Cycles of the sun, the wrong way to measure time."

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Apr 15, 2009 Daryl rated it 5 of 5 stars

O.K., so I read it while in college in the 60's so it might be a bit dated for some. For me, however, it was a brilliant first book by an promising author who died in a motorcycle accident while returning from a party to celebrate the publication of the book. (He was, coincidentally married to Joan Baez's sister, Mimi.) It certainly capture the Zeitgeist of the later 60's and early 70's as I experienced them. A witty and socially relevant reading of that era.

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Aug 26, 2012 David Cahall rated it 5 of 5 stars

my fave novel by far. Fariña weaves a tale so mesmerizingly real while remaining just over the top enough to make it a fun read.
captures the burgeoning spirit of hippiedom from the period as compared and contrasted with a variety of colorfully odd characters. gnossos, the main character is like a dirty christ navigating an even more soiled world. this book changed my life and is my go to! if ya don't like it, I'll eat my hat! genius, pure genius

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Feb 12, 2012 Paige rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Been Down So Long It Looks Up To Me" is a pretty odd book. I'm not sure if I can wrap my brain around all the events that happened without it imploding. Maybe I'll understand more after 10 more years of life, but for now I know the following: Gnossos is Greek. He would rather not be the figurehead of a campus wide revolt. He's back from soul searching and finds that his friends think he died somewhere in New Mexico. He's been hunting a famous drug lord (?) and is apparently rather good at hot-w...more

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Dec 03, 2012 John rated it 1 of 5 stars

I think Farina's editor was as stoned as the protagonist Gnossos in this rambling bizarrer rant. It reads like a pedantic, sophmoric coke- fueled binge that can only be understood or enudred by someone in an equally intoxicated state. This book features some of the worst dialogue imaginable. Verbal finger painting. It's like the intermission of a Grateful Dead show at the two hour mark where they pluck weird notes to roust hopelessly spaced out audiences. But at least the Dead will eventually pl...more

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May 08, 2011 Amelia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book at the recommendation of my father-a child of the 60's. At times crass and somewhat difficult to follow, Farina tells the story of Gnossos and friends at the start of the new culture that invaded college life in the 1960's. While not the deepest book I have ever read, it is one of the funniest, although I can see why it might not be appealing to everyone.

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May 04, 2009 Linda rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book in 1970 and have loved it ever since. Reread this winter 2009. What a story of the times we were in then and what has come out of that period. My 25 year old son tried to read it and didn't understand it at all and said so. Alas, for time that has passed (thank God, none of us knew what we were doing)and never again to be.

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Apr 20, 2009 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

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.

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Jun 19, 2010 David Schilling rated it 4 of 5 stars

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.

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About Richard Fariña

(1938-1966) 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...more

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“we mistake induction for generation.” — 1 person liked it

“The conscience of my elusive race gives not a fig for me, baby. But I endure, if you know what I mean.” — 1 person liked it

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Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me

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