University of Virginia Library

Through The Bookshelves Of Your Mind

Farina: Past As Future

By Charles Ribakoff

It is difficult to be objective
about a book like Richard Farina's
totally enjoyable and usually brilliant
novel Been Down So Long It
Looks Like Up To Me. In addition
to being an excellent book, it has so
many extra literary transferences
that it is hard to decide just how
much of the reading experience is
from just the book.

Been Down So Long is the
oldest of the books I've reviewed
for this series, and it has visibly
influenced most of the more recent
environmental novels that I've been
writing about. Farina started writing
the book in 1958 (although it
wasn't published until 1966), yet,
with an almost visionary style, he
describes such recent phenomena as
Ravi Shankar, campus revolution,
drugs, and other staples of life in
1969. Further, his hero (or
antihero) is a Genuine hippie -
conceived some 8 years before such
things became well-known. Thus,
while reading Been Down So Long,
one feels involved with a visionary
piece of history.

Culture Hero

Further, Richard Farina has
become a sort of culture hero to
many, which adds to the reader's
sense of being part of an extra literary
experience (is it possible to
be objective about early Dylan, for
example?). I first became familiar
with Farina through his music. He
wrote a good deal of material for
performers like Judy Collins in the
early sixties (Pack Up Your Sorrows
and Hard Lovin' Loser are
probably the best known), and he
recorded two excellent albums of
his material with his wife Mimi
(who is Joan Baez' sister in her
spare time). These albums, although
several years old, still sound very
contemporary. He also wrote a series
of very inventive antic short
stories which appeared in underground
and semi underground publications
like the Village Voice, during
which he perfected his novel
style, a kind of montage of Joseph
Heller blended with early Tom
Wolfe. His development as a writer
was a matter of public record, and
many of those who followed his
early career feel a sort of grandmotherly
instinct towards his perfected
style.

To complete Farina's image of
pop culture hero is his Hollywoodesque
death. While returning
from a party to celebrate the hardcover
publication of Been Down So
Long, he was thrown from his
motorcycle and killed. It is the sort
of thing that cults are made of.

Semi-Irrevelanial

I've gone through all this semi-irrelevential
because I am a sort of
Farina cultist, and I think that Been
Down So Long It Looks Like Up
To Me is a great book which is,
perhaps, overstating the case. There
are currently many writers who
have successfully assimilated and
improved on his style (notably
Thomas Pynchon and Newsweek
Movie Critic Joseph Morgernstern,
in his excellent forthcoming first
novel), and the subject matter —
youth, growing up, college, drugs,
and so on, is certainly no longer
new. But, once one got past the
horrendous paperback cover, there
is a certain artistry involved in
reading the original.

Irreverent Odyssey

Been Down So Long It Looks
Like Up To is the irreverent
odyssey of Gnossos Pappadopoulis
through a semester of college and
his last remaining moments of innocence
and youth. There are many
references to children's books, notably
Milne's Winnie The Pooh,
which work surprisingly well in
showing Gnossos' last childlike experiences.
Gnossos' youth has been
perpetuated by a concept he calls
Immunity, a state of mind which
allows him to do whatever he wants
without becoming involved . . . In
this sense, the fear of being involved
makes Pappadopoulis more a
descendant of characters like the
hero of Kerouac's On The Road
than he is a contemporary of more
modern antiheroes, although here
the similarity to Kerouac largely
ceases. (Richard Levey, a graduate
student at Kenyon, has published a
thesis which relates Been Down So
Long to ON The Road which you
may believe if you like; I don't.)

Gnossos' Immunity is the vehicle
he uses to come a key part of
many Scenes, including a campus
rebellion over parietals which results
in the unfortunate demise of
President Magnolia, the destruction
of the Dean's prized rock collection,
and of the statue of the
Virgin Mary who saw it all, Fraternity
rush, a drug ring, the Cuban
Revolution, and the Girl With The
Green Knee Socks.

Gnossos is the omnipresent vacuous
unifier. He shrugs his way
through disjointing, progressively
serious scenes with a group of
intriguing friends, and his ever-present
rucksack full of such magic
things as silver dollars which he uses
to pay for everything, a Captain
Midnight Spy Decoder Ring, remnant
of the Dean's rock collection,
some paregoric Pall Malls, and an
enema bag.

Good Guys and Bad Guys

Gnossos' Immunity results from
his innocence, which he gradually
loses while making a series of
macabre scenes. e Scenes are all
worth making, and Gnossos makes
them with a collection of accomplices
which include the horrible
Heffalump, Fitzgore, the multibreasted
Judy Lumpers, the virgin
Girl With The Green Knee Socks,
who gives him the clap, and the
mysterious Oeuf, the mysterious
Bad Guy with Total Control who,
under the guise of having jaundice,
has taken over a wing of student
health from which he plots his
revolution.

Cynical Hysteria

Farina's style, as may be gathered
from the types of characters
he uses, is cynically hysterical. He
uses the technique of reducing
everything to total absurdity, which
makes all things seem somehow
inevitable, and totally hysterical.
There is the incident in the campus
coffee house when the cashier refuses
to take Gnossos' silver dollars.
"Do you know who I am?" he
screams. I am King ******
Montezuma and this is the coin of
my kingdom. And if you fail to
honor the symbol of my realm, I
will have your heart torn out,
right?! OUT OUT OUT of your
body. At the top of a pyramid. And
I will eat it RAW!" The cashier
takes the silver dollar.

Gradually, the games become
more serious. Oeuf, a corpulent
jellicular inevitable, gains more and
more Control, chipping away at
Gnossos' immunity. Finally, Oeuf
gets Gnossos to take part in a
massive campus rally that is to
becomes his rebellion. With thousands
of students screaming his
name, Gnossos gets up and flashes
the great American double digital
salute, which ignites the crowd.
Oeuf becomes President of the University.

Evil Gail Figures

But the action strips Gnossos of
his Immunity; he has become involved.
The innocent Girl With The
Green Knee Socks, a true Gail
figure turns on him and gives him
the clap; Gnossos disposes of her
with an opium suppository, and
leaves without looking back. "You
can never tell who's going to turn
you into salt."

Sugar Coated Tragedy

This is his first actual catalytic
act (the demonstration had tried to
be anticatalytic, and failed); he has
lost his innocence, and with it, his
Immunity. He returns to his apartment
to find his Immunity gone.
The book ends in late Winnie The
Pooh style, as Gnossos gets drafted.

Been Down So Long is in many
ways a hilariously sugar coated tragedy;
it is impossible for Gnossos to
maintain his identity, as everything
turns on him. It is at times a to
true documentary of individualist
youth in America today.

Been Down So Long It Looks
Like Up To Me is more than historically
important. It is well written
and brilliantly planned, a
McLuhanesque novel before there
was McLuhan (sorry to bring that
up again), about a group of hippies
who were around before Time magazine
discovered hippies. It is a
sort of adult Winnie The Pooh, pure
fun on one level, and purely significant
on another. It is an excellent
reminder of where contemporary
literature has come from, and of
where it is going.