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Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Twentieth-Century Classics)

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Twentieth-Century Classics)

Farina evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily, and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age. The hero, Gnossus Pappadopoulis, weaves his way through the psychedelic landscape, encountering - among other things - mescaline, women, art, gluttony, falsehood, science, prayer, and, occasionally, truth.

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Authors: Richard Farina
Binding: Paperback; 352 pages
Publication Date: 5/15/07
Publisher: Penguin Classics
ISBN: 0140189300
Bookhuddle Average Rating: (4.0)
Amazon.com^® Average Rating: (4.0)

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Number of Reviews: 39, Amazon.com^® Average Rating:

(4.0)

(5) a good book about a strange life

this is real and worth reading for those who want to know about the strange times of beat era lifestyles. he doesnt dwell on the sex exploits, but they are there. as they were for all during those days (and still today). the best part is the way you see how open to change all the world was. the controls were much less than and odddball behavior was not anaylyzed. it just happened and changed the way people lived.

(3) The Beat Sound without the Beat Soul

This is a tough book to critique - it's championed by Thomas Pynchon and other people from that era as a book as important to the Beat Generation as "On the Road" and work by Ginsburg and Burroughs. The language has a jazz styling that captures the sound of the era. The lack of rhythm and disjointed prose, coupled with characterization as detailed as a haiku, seems in line with the generation that brought us "Howl." Yet, there is something not quite right here, something missing, something unsatisfying. With generations in love with the road novels, full of drugs and sex, but also a spirit of freedom, one that continues to inspire current generations, this book doesn't fit in properly. Farina's so-called masterpiece is little more than a disjointed narrative about the return of Gnossos Pappadopoulis, hipster who returns to Ithaca after an extended leave only to cause trouble for his friends. Some of the drama is over the top, but that's not the problem here - the book seemed more like a collection of vignettes loosely held together, none of which having anything going for them other than the voice of an insider telling us what's what. I really expected more from this considering the place of honor the book has received. I would pass on this and stick to Kerouac and the other better known Beats for a look at what made that generation unique.

(5) An American Classic

It's hard to knock this surrealistic journey from the mind of a truly original talent. At turns hilarious and horrifying, the sensibility behind the story shines through at every page, a post-apocalyptic coda to "Huckleberry Finn."

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