Fariña

I like the sound of this novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Fariña, a friend of Thomas Pynchon's whose Gravity's Rainbow I am reading at the moment and must take on the bus with me on my way to yoga this morning. Must have a shower. Bye.
 

Comments

[Andrew]

That Gravity's Rainbow is a funny one. I think it's an amazingly dense literary object but I am suspicious of the notion that it's the Greatest American Novel of the Twentieth Century or whatever. It is definitely the Greatest American Comic Book Without Pictures of the Twentieth Century though! And I don't mean that as a slag. How are you finding it? The idea of the Greatest whatever in any category is kind of pointless anyhow. But I guess the scope of the thing invites that. And the amount of work put into reading it (let alone writing it!)... It is sort of holographic, and I'm not going to elaborate on that for the moment. I also happen to have read Been Down So Long... so I will pass comment on that too though I have even less of worth to say on that subject. Poignant that he died in a motorcycle accident on the way home from the book launch, if I have that story right. Haven't made it to the Wikipedia article. As well I remember my parents having some (folk I guess) albums by Richard and Mimi Farina, which must be the same guy, no? How many Richard Farinas were running around in those days? While we are on the subject of books, have you read Margaret Atwood's Surfacing? This might be the book I've loaned out (permanently, generally) or recommended the most. Another one that is very of its time (early 1970s or so) and is the only thing I've read by her that really made an impact. Other of her novels I've found to be a 'good read' but this is the only one that really, really found a new space, if I can put it that way.