Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Gnossos (i.e.Richard Farina in disguise) is a young man obsessed with vision, women, drugs, and faking his way into college as a means to all these things. His cohorts' names are often as ludicrous as the fruitless, ominous adventures they embark upon; but for some reason I liked this better than Kerouac's "On the Road". There's something more sincere about it. Think of it as "The Basketball Diaries" of an earlier generation with a little more art thrown into it. We get a sense of Gnossos early in the tale as a young man with something to prove, his philosophy of Exemption--complete individuality, maintaining his cool in the face of extreme adversity--bringing him into closer and closer contact with the authorities as the novel goes on. He consistently defies tradition, morality, and all forms of institutional orthodoxy through pranks, his obsession with criminals and 'degenerates' of every sort, mind-expansion (and, let's face it, simple drug abuse) through hallucinogens. For all his heroic and daring qualities, however, Gnossos is not a nice guy. He screws a girl with a fiancee, unblinkingly telling her that he is wearing a condom when he is not, and handing her an enema bag after he is done. He is abrasive and unnecessarily cruel, giving the finger to every person he sees simply because he fails to get laid in one scene. All the while, though, his desperate search for 'something more' comes across even as his darker and more despicable qualities surface. The ending is shocking and sad, but predictable. Pynchon's introduction is telling about the actual Farina. One of the only beat novels I'd take the time to read.

Unrefined at times as it is, for a first novel this is far better than anything I could ever do. Say what you want about Farina, but this novel swaggers with the confidence that only a young punk can have, daring you to deny that it's not the greatest novel ever written. It's not, but it is highly entertaining and evocative of the spirit of the times (or any time, really) even if the events and characters are almost comically outlandish. Set mostly around a college campus just as the Sixties are dawning, it tells the story of Gnossus, a man who just wants to be Exempt, who makes his way through the turbulant times by simply trying to do his own thing, whether other folks care or not. It's a credit to Farina that he can make the reader even sympathize a little bit with a character as obtuse as Gnossus, who tends to act only for himself, treat other characters in a random fashion and spend more time as a bystander than a participant. Yet care we do, if only because we want the things that Gnossus wants, to be apart from everything, to try and live life to its fullest while remaining above all the nasty chaos that life tends to throw at you. This is a novel that succeeds mostly on atmosphere and sheer determination, since the plot can at best be described as ramshackle, not quite episodic but not quite directed either, it bounces from scene to scene with apparent purpose but also like a hyperactive toddler, which can be engaging or very annoying depending on your tolerance for that sort of thing. What makes the book really work for me though is Farina's prose . . . maybe it's meaningless babble but for me it really hopes to set the mood, with odd shifts in sentence rhythm, witty asides and strange play on words, but at the same time he's utterly capable of imbuing a scene with great emotion and care and his descriptions are wonderfully different, off kilter but still able to convey vibrant images. In the end, it's the spirit of fun that infuses this book that makes me look so fondly on it. It's the work of someone who felt he could do anything and if he had lived, maybe he would have shown us that he could. Either way, this book stands to show that the possibility was there. Most people who read this probably came by way of Thomas Pynchon's recommendation (that's the way I came) but their styles aren't similar at all. This is equally enjoyable, just for the different reasons and stands on its own as a hallmark of literature from the last half century.

I read this book in one sitting the day that it hit the bookstores. Being a fan of Farina's music, I had anxiously awaited its publication, The first edition, which I have read over a half dozen times (about once a decade after three readings in it's year of pubication,) sits on my bookshelf next to his posthumously published Long Time Coming And A Long Time Gone. They are a part of the cornerstone of my Modern American Fiction collection. Since I still have my first edition, I have never read the Pynchon introduction. Farina must have known something as the book's opening quotation from Benjamin Franklin is " I must soon quit the scene." Farina died on the day of the autographing party for this book. Bottom line, it is a wonderful read. It is a portrait of the time, yet transends that time in many ways. If you do not find wonder in this book, there is something that you just do not get. I still mourn his death and all the music and prose that he did not write. So many talented people leave us too soon.

Richard Farina was a consummate songerwriter, poet and hopeful novelist, until his first and only novel burst onto the scene. Although a later book was released that was a compilation of some short stories, poems, and articles about him, this was the only book he had to stretch toward the literary heavens with. And it was indeed a smash! Unfortunately, Farina, who was married to Joan Baez' younger sister Mimi, with whom he had forged a folk duo that played and recorded some of his wonderful poetry put to music, never lived to experience his own wild success, as he fell off the back of a motorcycle on the way home from the publication party for this book, and was killed instantly. But the book lives, indeed it flourishes, and the paperback version has never been out of print in all this time, which is ample testimony to its continuing power, verve, and its timeless message, as well as to its beautifully written story. This is a wonderful book, one that has grown in reputation and stature over the intervening decades, and as another, much younger reviewer commented, it is one for everyone, not just for us greying babyboomers who were lucky enough to have discovered and experienced Richard in his prime. For all of us who have read his work, or listened to his music, or experienced his poetry, or for those of us who were lucky enough to see Mimi and Richard perform at the Newport Folk Festival, one can still hear the faint echoes of their haunting guitar harmonies and vocals, and we truly know that he is still with us. We know that he has truly left us a present, his evocative "reflections in a crystal dream". Although set in a time before the changes of the sixties started to roar, one soon recognizes teh signs and spirit of the times in his words and the storyline. Enter Gnossos, soul of the road, keeper of the eternal flame, and a pilgrim on an endless search for the holy grail of cool, and the college town of Athene (read Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell) will never be the same. Nor will you after digesting this wild, extremely readable parable. So, friend, don't hesitate; buy it, read it, but do so slllllloooooowwwwwllllly, savoring every gorgeous moment of it. It's all we have left of him, the only legacy of an incredible talent and a wonderful spokesperson for the otherwise indescribable sixties.

I was handed this book when I was a freshman in college in 1966 and I never looked back. It introduced me to a world I would soon inhabit in more ways than one. I will always be thankful for the friend who gave it to me, a little Ohio girl who had a lot of theory to get through. The characters, their dreams, nightmares and paranoia are those of the times and I think understandable to the young of today who, although the material world they inhabit may be different in many ways, their responses may be similar. Dreadful though it may be that Richard Farina died so young, he left us this rich novel and I thank him.