Richard Fariña
Paperback | Pages: 352 pages Rating: 3.8 | 2780 Users | 264 Reviews
List Containing Books Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
| Title | : | Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me |
| Author | : | Richard Fariña |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 352 pages |
| Published | : | August 29th 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published April 1966) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Novels. Classics. Literature. American |
Relation Toward Books Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Richard Fariña stands at the crossroads of postmodernism and beat culture… Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me – the title is already a pure poetry. And everything that you may find inside is thoroughly innovative and absolutely and fantastically postmodern but the tale is about the retreating into the past beat generation… A requiem of sorts. Not for nothing Thomas Pynchon dedicated his Gravity's Rainbow to Richard Fariña.I am invisible, he thinks often. And Exempt. Immunity has been granted to me, for I do not lose my cool. Polarity is selected at will, for I am not ionized and I possess not valence. Call me inert and featureless but Beware, I am the Shadow, free to cloud men’s minds.The hero’s name Gnossos is a talking name – it is derived from the Greek term ‘Gnosis’ and may be interpreted as a ‘possessor of esoteric knowledge’.
“We share a dissipating current, Gnossos. Like transformer coils, you see, we mistake induction for generation. Vicarious sampling is all that remains; the sour evening game of the academies.”Mankind is on the wrong as usual. And on the quest to find the meaning, hiking through the psychedelic landscapes, one may find instead human meanness without limits.
Present Books In Favor Of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
| Original Title: | Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me |
| ISBN: | 0140189300 (ISBN13: 9780140189308) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Containing Books Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Ratings: 3.8 From 2780 Users | 264 ReviewsWrite-Up Containing Books Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Wow....this book is a trip. Often I didnt know where I was in time or space, what was happening, or why, and I liked that. Somehow the apolitical antihero, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, finds himself the poster child of college campus revolt. The college is a thinly veiled Cornell, and every corner is laced with opiates, theatrics, suicidal longing, and total immorality. Dense lists, paranoid rambling, and philosophical heresy fill the pages of this chaotic, whirlwind novel. Hilarious and twisted, theWell, 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
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
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/wife2. 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
I read this in the late sixties and wasn't impressed back then. I first experienced Richard Farina as a mediocre singer and songwriter, and his fiction writing fell into the same category. I guess that much of his reputation rests on his good looks and his early death in a motorcycle accident - also his friendship with Thomas Pynchon. None of which has anything to do with good writing.I have no desire to reread this. I'll trust my early memories.
Richard Farinña's style is upbeat, frantic, surreal and unpredictable. It actually told a story, had a narrative of some sort, and that was surprising. I overall enjoyed the book, but I am aware that the style is not for everyone. I especially liked it because it has a resonance with my own writing style, this Kerouac-ian adversity to full stops. I admittedly lost track whenever there was a conversation going on in the novel, as Fariña is faithful to the characters egoistic dispositions, and has
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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