Richard Fariña

L’avenir n’est plus ce qu’il était

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

April 4, 2019

Novel

384 pages

184 × 208 mm

23 €

979-1-0278-0200-5

Translated from the American English by Brice Matthieussent

Interforum

Richard Fariña, L’avenir n’est plus ce qu’il était

The novel features Gnossos Pappadopoulis, a crazy and brilliant hero, wandering on a campus where revolt rumbles. We are in 1958 and Pappadopoulis is thirsty for everything: mescaline, alcohol, girls, art and science, prayer and truth. At the same time, he is fascinated by death, which he teases every day and which he will take to Cuba, under the guise of a revolutionary expedition. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is a black jewel with a strong autobiographical flavour. And behind the hero’s creative and suicidal energy lies a portrait: that of the spirit, madness and freedom of the sixties.

The author

Born in 1937, Richard Fariña grew up in Brooklyn, before studying at the prestigious Cornell University where he befriended Thomas Pynchon. He then worked odd jobs in New York, mixing in the heart of a network of counter-culture artists. In 1963, he married Mimi, Joan Baez’s sister, forming a talented folk music duo. Just as his friends Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were beginning to make a name for themselves, his manuscript was accepted at Random House. Richard Fariña is then promised to a great career as a musician, poet and novelist…

Press

“The first time I read this manuscript, I remember giving Fariña a lot of advice. Fortunately, he didn’t follow any of them.”

Thomas Pynchon.

“It floats above the youthful effervescence that Fariña describes, a perfume of mass graves and disease that gives this novel, stranger than it seems, a power of attraction that goes beyond seduction.”

Le Monde.

The edition

Preface by Thomas Pynchon.