Richard Farina (fwd)

[gilbert at sfu.ca]

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>From E7E4ALL at TOE.TOWSON.EDU Mon Mar  8 13:39:13 1993
Date: 08 Mar 1993 16:18:40 -0500 (EST)
From: E7E4ALL at TOE.TOWSON.EDU
Subject: Richard Farina
To: gilbert at sfu.ca
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Pynchon List--
	This is my first entry on the list, and it's trivial, but for those
interested in Richard Farina's _Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me_...
	Farina & Pynchon were indeed buddies at Cornell.  Best buddies.  And
Pynchon's influence is clearly evident throughout _Been Down So Long..._  There
is even a rumor that Farina actually did participate in a little gun running
to the Cuban rebels just before Castro took over.
	He never graduated from Cornell, but went into performing as a folk
singer with his wife, Mimi Farina, who is Joan Baez's sister.  When his
novel was published, there was a big bash.  Farina, drunk, went out on a 
motorcycle.  Whether Pynchon was with him or not is subject to different
versions.  In any case there was a crash, Farina was killed ... and Thomas
Ruggles went into a funk that perhaps he's never gotten out of.  It was
right after that he started disappearing regularly, into Sante Fe, and then
Seattle, then Mexico, etc.

	On a more professional note--someone wrote about the "bobby traps"
in Pynchon's work.  Perhaps less booby traps than sites of possible
interpretations which seem either overdetermined or ambiguous, depending on
your tolerance for uncertainty.  Which doesn't, I think, make critics
necessarily "boobs" for exploring those sites.  As Pynchon would probably
be the 1st to argue, what you see in the book is what's in the book.

Scott Allen
Dept. of English
Towson State U.
Towson, MD



==============================================================================

John (Jody) K. Gilbert
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. Canada
office phone (604) 291-3220
dept. phone  (604) 291-3136
internet     gilbert at sfu.ca