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Richard Fariña (1937–1966)

Författare till Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

11+ verk 1,121 medlemmar 21 recensioner 5 favoritmärkta

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Verk av Richard Fariña

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Which is better? To know more about the author than his work or vice versa, especially when starting to read his debut novel? I had just finished reading a biography that included Farina and it seemed like a natural progression to dive into his novel. But before I began I questioned, was this a good idea? What if my reading and interpretation would be skewed by knowing Farina's life more intimately than not? Pynchon admits Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is transparently autobiographical. Gnossos Pappadopoulis ("the G is silent") is Richard Farina in more ways than probably the author intended. Art imitates life in this case. There is a collision of blood with the manic boo to make everything a little more celestial in its demise.
In addition to being autobiographical, Been Down So Long is a tribute to the culture of the late 1950s. Drugs, relationships, music, college, sex, religion, all show up and parade past the reader waving their colors of glory. Amidst the electric blue imagery seethes black comedy. There is a jaunty style of half lying that simply cannot be believed. Buzzy. I am sure with all the farmland there are plenty of rainbows and you should not forget about the umbro horrors rocks in the roots that fall down like marshmallows in cloudlike wisps. Gnossos, like Farina, was the king of tall tales, as he says "ovarian doom waiting to be fertilized" (p 12).
… (mer)
 
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SeriousGrace | 16 andra recensioner | Jun 28, 2022 |
Most likely few people, perhaps militant fans of mid-tier 60s folk, will come at this book from any other direction than from the Thomas Pynchon connection, like I did. Pynchon's Introduction to my copy has a lot of interesting things to say about the background behind the novel - the inspirations for the characters, Fariña's storytelling abilities, how stultifying life during the mid-50s was - but whether it's due to his sentimental memories, its similarities to his own early work, or perhaps some ability to see things in the book I can't, he rates the book much more highly than I do ("like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch", in his infamous phrase).

It's at heart one of those books that's almost more a reaction to the artistic conformity of the 50s than it is a work of its own. The plot is a mix of the kind of cheerful antisocial hooliganism of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Animal House, while the writing style is more reminiscent of contemporaries like Ken Kesey or Jack Kerouac; think fast, irreverent, funny, loose, filled with drinking and drugs and friends breaking rules. There's a lot of overlap with the Whole Sick Crew from Pynchon's V. So much of the book is obviously based on Fariña's personal life, like the setting, the characters, the stories like the wolf one, and probably the dialogue, that it comes off like he took "write what you know" extremely literally. The Gnossos Pappadopoulis is not completely a Mary Sue protagonist, but his overwhelming coolness - like the climactic rally scene where Gnossos is adulated for seemingly no reason at all - says perhaps more than was intended about the author's self-image. I'm willing to believe Pynchon that Fariña was a better person than his hero, however there are a few scenes in the book, such as the resolution with the Kristin character, that are repulsive and not in a good way (then again, the same is true of Pynchon's books as well).

Another reason why the book seems a bit lighter than, say, one of Pynchon's novel's from that period, is that the novel isn't really about much. Gnossos doesn't grow or change much; his self-image of Exemption from the nastier sides of life come off as much more juvenile or adolescent than McClintic Sphere's "keep cool but care" mantra from V. Also, though there's tons of drug use in the book, there isn't the same fascination with druggy/nerdy ideas that his friend had; compare the scene with L'Hôpital's Rule here to the brilliant band-pass filter scene of Kilroy in V. In terms of writing style, there are many sentences with lists like in V., but they don't have the same kind of ring to them even though both authors have an affinity for the same Miles Davis and Mose Allison tunes that permeate their respective atmospheres. I don't mean to compare the two novels or writers so much, yet they are so nearly similar in so many ways that it's almost unavoidable - there's even a fun raga instrumental called "V." on one of Fariña's folk albums.

Ultimately, Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up to Me comes off like a fascinating alternate take or set of demos from a band that was in the same scene as a more famous group yet whose career never took off in the same way. Fariña's tragic death obviously affected Pynchon deeply, and maybe that's why his books published after the accident do treat death and mortality a little more seriously than Fariña's does. I'm not sure the famous writing advice that dealing with death is required to be a "serious" writer is really true since there's no one way to write a novel, but this one seems to lack something that would put it in the first tier of novels from the time. Maybe if he'd lived this book would be seen as the beginning of something great instead of the merely acceptable half-forgotten relic it is now. Still, it is filled with the kind of exuberance that's moving at times and delivers its own brand of enjoyment, so if you've sworn an oath to track down every piece of literature connected to Pynchon, like I have, then this is a decent stop after Oakley Hall's Warlock.
… (mer)
 
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aaronarnold | 16 andra recensioner | May 11, 2021 |
This book SUCKED! it made me so ANGRY! So contrived, so solipsistic, so self-conscious and BORING! What a try-hard! Do not read this!!
 
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uncleflannery | 16 andra recensioner | May 16, 2020 |
A collection of poems and short pieces by and about a beginning novelist author of "Been Down So Long It looks up to me." That work was interesting, and this collection has interest for biographical information. His death, three days after his publication of that novel was tragic, As he had begun well.
 
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DinadansFriend | Jun 12, 2019 |

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