turner (03/15/83)
#N:ucbesvax:13500006:000:5122
ucbesvax!turner Mar 15 01:57:00 1983
Richard Farina (that's a tilde over the n) is better known, if
he is known at all, for his two folk-pop albums in collaboration with
his wife Mimi Farina ne Baez (sister of you-know-who). He is also
known for his friendship (at Cornell and later in California) with a
more famous story writer and novelist, Thomas Pynchon. Finally, he
died in glorious 60's style, in a motorcycle accident -- but is not
counted in with Marilyn, Jimi, or James for the obvious reason that,
however flamboyant he was in life, in death he was a literary man.
I read Pynchon first, starting with "The Crying of Lot 49", then
back to the earlier "V", then forward to "Gravity's Rainbow", and
then back again to as many of his short stories as I could find in
odd sixtiesish anthologies and in bootleg editions. In my soon-to-
become-feverish tracking of trivia of the author's work and life,
I noticed the dedication to Farina on G.R., and was serendipitously
introduced to Farina's albums.
Another wrinkle in the search -- and so much the better, I thought.
The library turned up a book of essays -- interesting and well-
written, but not remarkable -- and a novel: "Been Down So Long It Looks
Like Up To Me". I read this book, and was alternately apalled and
delighted. Farina is not Pynchon, and is not up to Pynchon's level
of erudition and comedic brilliance. But Farina was clearly ahead of
Pynchon in many significant ways. This noted, I forgot about the book
-- until just recently. I checked it out again, read it again, came to
the same conclusions again, and returned it. A day later, a reissue
of the novel hit the local bookstands. This sort of thing sends a
chill down one's spine -- I think it had been out of print for ten
years, at least. It had been at least eight since I had last read it.
The reissue dangles before the buyer's eyes some banner line to
the effect of "THE Novel of the Sixties", and has, more importantly,
a forward by Thomas Pynchon himself, which is an affectionate portrait
of Farina and their shared years at Cornell. This makes it a good
buy in itself.
By now, you're all screaming "But what is the book ABOUT?" Well,
it defies analysis in many ways (one of which is the really tasteless
prose to be found on almost every page), but it does have something
of a plot, and that will have to do.
The book follows a single character (Gnossos Pappadopolous) from
his return to Cornell after a rather hair-raising "in search of amerika"
type of thumbing tour, through a love-affair (his first, despite
already-formidable credentials as a womanizer), a good deal of unhinging
consumption of various drugs (not that Gnossos isn't already somewhat
unhinged in this way already), along on a trip to revolutionay Cuba
(this is 1959), and back to Cornell, where a massive student movement
has been organized around sexual freedom for Cornell Co-eds.
Well, it's very easy to dispense with this book as a mere trifle,
a relic of the time, written exploitively and after the fact.
However (as Pynchon makes clear) much of the book is historical --
Gnossos is a demonic shadow-image of the sunnier Farina; the huge
demonstration (and remember, this is the Fifties, which by some accounts
lasted until 1963) actually occured, and the psychedelic "revolution"
which is generally felt to have blossomed in the mid-60's is seen to
have roots in this earlier era. AND, Farina had been to Cuba at the
time of the events described.
It is interesting on a number of counts: as a stylistic primer
for Pynchon, as a dictionary of Jive as affected by hip college students,
as student-movement pre-history, and for its revealed autobiographical
aspect. Much of the dialogue is now so dated as to be unreadable --
and undoubtedly it was too cute by half even for its time. Radical
Feminists will find the book almost monstrously sexist part -- and thus
will never get to the part where the one lesbian character heads off
into the Cuban Sierras to join Castro. Conservatives will snort, and
throw the book down in disgust from the first page. And anyone who picks
their outside reading from the best-seller racks will find many obstacles
to easy reading thrown in their way.
In short, I recommend it. Not as a great book -- it's not even
a very good one. Not as "fun" reading -- while very funny, it is
revolting and mindlessly difficult in a number of ways. Not as anything
one normally reads books for. In that, I think, is its value -- it's
different, and invades one's sense of security in a way that's peculiar
and NOT altogether refreshing. One finishes the book feeling somewhat
used. That is an unusually accurate feeling for times like these -- and
the unpleasant time for unpleasant books like these has, evidently,
rolled around once again.
FINALLY, With A Book To Recommend,
Michael Turner
ucbvax!esvax:turner