Rosenbaum on Dylan and Farina

[davemarc]

Richard Farina's novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me came out in
1966. Thomas Pynchon dedicated his novel "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973) "For
Richard Farina." The following year, Bob Dylan came out with the album Blood
on the Tracks, omitting a track, called "Up to Me," that Dylan has
apparently never sung this song in public.

Ron Rosenbaum believes is that "Up to Me" is one of Dylan's greatest songs.
He makes a "wild conjecture" connecting that song and Farina (making a
Pynchon pun in the process) in his New York Observer article "It's 30 Years
Later! Bob Dylan's Tracks Gloriously Bloody" at
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=9286.

Don't expect anything explicit about Pynchon. But if Rosenbaum is on target,
the article might shed some light on the the relationships and strong
feeling among Pynchon, Farina, Dylan, and the rest of the set portrayed in
David Hajdu's book "Postively 4th Street," which Rosenbaum praises as a
"lovely study."

d.