Davis: Whatever Happened to Richard Farina?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

'Whatever Happened to Richard Fariña?'
Robert Murray Davis, _World Literature Today_ 80.3, Norman, May/Jun 
2006, pp. 39-41

Excerpt:
"Another problem is that Fariña had the bad luck to come up against 
better writers, just as Jabbo Smith and Tommy Ladiner had the bad luck 
to arrive on the scene at the same time as Louis Armstrong. They were 
very good trumpet players, just not as good as Louis, and there wasn't 
room for them in the public consciousness or, for long periods, in the 
music scene. Fariña wasn't as good a writer as Smith and Ladiner were 
musicians, but he suffers by comparison with Pynchon, whose The Crying 
of Lot 49 was also published in 1966. Compare these passages [...]"

Pdf available offlist.

best