Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Pete, I found out the title and author of that book I tried to recommend to you last night. It's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, by Richard Fariña, who went to Cornell with Pynchon in the 50s, was a friend and fellow musician to Bob Dylan in New York in the 60s, and got himself killed in a motorcycle accident when he was 29, two days after the book was published.
The book's a fun and quick read, and has a lot of qualities in common with Pynchon -- goofball energy with a dark undertow, a parodistically baroque conspiracy-based plot, bunches of odd side characters with odd names, and snatches of pop culture references (especially, if memory serves, to blues music and Winnie the Pooh).
I also thought of you when I heard this punk song on the radio (WNHU, New Haven University) driving home from work tonight:
Lead Singer: I ain't got no job!
Band: No job, no future!
Lead: I ain't got no job!
Band: No job, no future!
Lead: I ain't got no job!
All: [unintelligible]!!!
Hang in there. I mean, at least your job is a job.
The book's a fun and quick read, and has a lot of qualities in common with Pynchon -- goofball energy with a dark undertow, a parodistically baroque conspiracy-based plot, bunches of odd side characters with odd names, and snatches of pop culture references (especially, if memory serves, to blues music and Winnie the Pooh).
I also thought of you when I heard this punk song on the radio (WNHU, New Haven University) driving home from work tonight:
Lead Singer: I ain't got no job!
Band: No job, no future!
Lead: I ain't got no job!
Band: No job, no future!
Lead: I ain't got no job!
All: [unintelligible]!!!
Hang in there. I mean, at least your job is a job.
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