Been down so long it looks like up to me
by Richard Fariña · first published 1966
3mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2014–2016first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Based largely on Farinã's college experiences and travels, the novel is a comic picaresque story of Gnossos Pappadopoulis that takes place in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an upstate New York university.
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I will always appreciate the core of Gravity's Rainbow being "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" by Richard Farina. That was cool, no matter how jokey and convoluted the work was.
on “Difficult, Dated, Frustrating, Prophetic – Teaching Thomas Pynchon” ↗The picaresque novel "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" by Richard Farina (classmate of Tom Pynchon's) has an incredible scene where a traveling student drinks martinis in Vegas with rich oilmen as they watch the bombs go off before dawn. At first I thought…
on “In 1950s Vegas Exploding A-Bombs Were Cause For a Party” ↗Gravity's Rainbow is also a tribute to Richard Fariña's "Been Down So Long It Looks Like up To Me". Pynchon and Richard Fariña were friends. The two are very linked conceptually. BDSLILLUTM is decidedly about paranoia. Beware girls with green knee socks.
on “What does randomness look like? (2012)” ↗