I first read this novel in mid 1972, according to what might be termed
circumstantial evidence. I have no idea why I bought this book then; its
author, Richard Fariña, would not have been known to me (although it would
be soon known as Sandy Denny recorded a song on her second album with
words by Fariña, and the early Fairport recorded a song or two by him).
Presumably the title spoke to me.
I do have two specific memories about the book: one is reading it in
'private study' at school and sniggering over the seduction scene at the
beginning of the book (I was only 15 at the time and full of hormones).
The other is writing a song based on a small part of the book on 2 October
1972.
I feel now that I didn't understand the book then to any great depth. This
was probably due in part to the author's predilection for including large
lists of items most of which were unknown to me. An example:
wrapped tightly in his parka (the blanket of Linus, the warmth of the
woods, his portable womb), the rucksack packed thickly with the only
possessions and necessities of his life: a Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph,
one hundred and sixty-nine silver dollars, a current 1958 calendar, eight
vials of paregoric, a plastic sack of exotic seeds, a packet of grapevine
leaves in a special humidor, a jar of feta, sections of wire coathanger to
be used as shish kebab skewers, a boy scout shirt, two cinnamon sticks, a
bottlecap from Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic, a change of Fruit-of-the-Loom
underwear from a foraging at Bloomingdale’s, an extra pair of corduroy
pants, a 1920’s baseball cap, a Hohner F harmonica, six venison loin
chops, and an arbitrary number of recently severed and salted rabbits’
feet. So much for getting to the point, although this list does tell us concisely
a great deal about the book's protagonist.
As far as I could figure out, the protagonist (Gnossos Pappadopoulis, hereon
GP) returns to a university town quaintly named Athené, tying in with the
above Greek name; in real life, this town is Ithaca, upstate New York, and
the university is Cornell. He meets up with old friends, goes to parties,
meets a girl and falls in love with her, gets co-opted into student reform,
breaks up with the girl, travels to Cuba, gets involved in heroin smuggling
and finally gets drafted. This is all written in obscure prose. There are
also several references to "Winnie the Pooh"; despite being British, I had
never read the Pooh books so most of these references passed me by.
For some reason, I was reminded of this book several months ago and have
been trying since to lay my hands on a copy. When I did find the book,
rereading it didn't make me any wiser, and in retrospect, maybe I shouldn't
even have bothered. But the girl in the green knee socks would beg to
differ.
It would be more rewarding to view the book from a character hiding in the
wings, G. Alonso Oeuf, who spends almost all of his time in a room in the
local hospital that he has turned into an operations centre with several
telephones. Ouef is trying to overthrow the university's president,
presumably to install himself, and uses GP as a pawn to achieve this. Once
aware of GP's return to Athené, he sets GP up with a honey trap, and once GP
is caught, he uses GP as a figurehead to inspire the independent students
(i.e. those not in fraternities) to revolt. Sexual favours are withdrawn
from GP at this point.
One's understanding of the final page, with the handing over of the draft
notice (signed by Ouef) is dependent upon when one is reading the book.
Obviously it means leaving the cushy life of a student (and GP appears to be
a student of astronomy, although there is very little evidence of this) and
moving towards a very regimented life, but there's a bit more. I'm not sure
what the American army was doing in 1958, but a few years later, a draft
notice would probably mean Vietnam.
But it's all a muddle. Maybe
the book would have made more sense at the time of its writing, but sixty
years later, it is almost incomprehensible. The introduction to the book,
written by Thomas Pynchon in 1983 (i.e. a decade after I had originally read
the book), includes the following explanatory material…
1958, to be sure, was another planet. You have to appreciate the extent of
sexual repression on that campus at the time. Rock ’n’ roll had been with us
for a few years, but the formulation Dope/Sex/Rock ’n’ Roll hadn’t yet been
made by too many of us. At Cornell, all undergraduate women were supposed to
be residing, part of the time under lock and key, either in dormitories or
sorority houses. On weeknights they had to be inside these places by
something like 11 P.M., at which time all the doors were locked. Staying out
all night without authorization meant discipline by the Women’s Judiciary
Board, up to and including expulsion from school. On Saturday nights the
curfew was graciously extended to something equally unreal, like 12
midnight.
Curfews were not the only erotic problem we faced—there was also a three-
or four-to-one ratio of male to female students, as well as a variety of
coed undergarments fiendishly designed to delay until curfew, if not to
prevent outright, any access to one’s date’s pelvic area. One sorority
house I knew of, and certainly others, had a house officer stationed by
the front door on date nights. Her job was to make sure, in a polite but
manual way, that every sister had some version of a Playtex chastity belt
in place before she was allowed out the door. Landlords and local
tradesfolk were also encouraged to report to the Administration the
presence of coeds in off-campus apartments, such as Fariña’s. In these and
other ways, the University believed it was doing its duty to act in loco parentis. This extraordinary meddling was not seriously protested until the
spring of 1958, when, like a preview of the ’60s, students got together on
the issue, wrote letters, rallied, demonstrated, and finally, a couple of
thousand strong, by torchlight in the curfew hours between May 23rd and
24th, marched to and stormed the home of the University president. Rocks,
eggs, and a smoke bomb were deployed. Standing on his front porch, the
egg-spattered president vowed that Cornell would never be run by mob rule.
He then went inside and called the proctor, or chief campus cop,
screaming, “I want heads! . . . I don’t care whose! Just get me some
heads, and be quick about it!” So at least ran the rumor next day, when
four upperclassmen, Fariña among them, were suspended. Students, however,
were having none of this—they were angry. New demonstrations were
suggested. After some dickering, the four were reinstated. This was the
political and emotional background of that long-ago spring term at
Cornell—the time and setting of Richard Fariña’s novel "Been Down So Long
It Looks Like Up to Me".
This day in history:
Blog #
|
Date
|
Title |
Tags |
| 480 |
10/05/2012
|
Charity begins at home
|
Charity work |
| 705 |
10/05/2014
|
Dreams, obsessions and predictions |
DBA, Robert Silverberg |
| 706 |
10/05/2014
|
Restless legs and a research draft outtake |
DBA, Health |
| 841 |
10/05/2015
|
Investment fund manager |
LTC fund management |
| 950 |
10/05/2016
|
Unconnected snippets |
Personal, Shoes |
| 1029 |
10/05/2017
|
DCI Banks - Wednesday's child |
DCI Banks |
| 1316 |
10/05/2020
|
Jamie Oliver inspires a chicken dish |
Cooking |
