Rating: 
Summary: "I want to BE the sun"
Review: Gnossos (i.e.Richard Farina in disguise) is a young man obsessed with vision, women, drugs, and faking his way into college as a means to all these things. His cohorts' names are often as ludicrous as the fruitless, ominous adventures they embark upon; but for some reason I liked this better than Kerouac's "On the Road". There's something more sincere about it. Think of it as "The Basketball Diaries" of an earlier generation with a little more art thrown into it.
We get a sense of Gnossos early in the tale as a young man with something to prove, his philosophy of Exemption--complete individuality, maintaining his cool in the face of extreme adversity--bringing him into closer and closer contact with the authorities as the novel goes on. He consistently defies tradition, morality, and all forms of institutional orthodoxy through pranks, his obsession with criminals and 'degenerates' of every sort, mind-expansion (and, let's face it, simple drug abuse) through hallucinogens. For all his heroic and daring qualities, however, Gnossos is not a nice guy. He screws a girl with a fiancee, unblinkingly telling her that he is wearing a condom when he is not, and handing her an enema bag after he is done. He is abrasive and unnecessarily cruel, giving the finger to every person he sees simply because he fails to get laid in one scene. All the while, though, his desperate search for 'something more' comes across even as his darker and more despicable qualities surface. The ending is shocking and sad, but predictable. Pynchon's introduction is telling about the actual Farina.
One of the only beat novels I'd take the time to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Inconceivably overrated
Review: I hate to be blunt, but if you think this is a masterpiece, you need to be introduced to some masterpieces. James Joyce's ULYSSES is a masterpiece. The novels of Faulkner are masterpieces. Even Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD is a minor masterpiece. This book is dreck.It is poorly written, has uninteresting characters, and doesn't tell a story of any real significance. It all comes across as a bad imitation of Burroughs and Kerouac.
Rating:
Summary: Inconceivably overrated
Review: I hate to be blunt, but if you think this is a masterpiece, you need to be introduced to some masterpieces. James Joyce's ULYSSES is a masterpiece. The novels of Faulkner are masterpieces. Even Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD is a minor masterpiece. This book is dreck. It is poorly written, has uninteresting characters, and doesn't tell a story of any real significance. It all comes across as a bad imitation of Burroughs and Kerouac.
Rating:
Summary: Been Around So Long It's A Part Of Me
Review: I read this book in one sitting the day that it hit the bookstores. Being a fan of Farina's music, I had anxiously awaited its publication, The first edition, which I have read over a half dozen times (about once a decade after three readings in it's year of pubication,) sits on my bookshelf next to his posthumously published Long Time Coming And A Long Time Gone. They are a part of the cornerstone of my Modern American Fiction collection. Since I still have my first edition, I have never read the Pynchon introduction. Farina must have known something as the book's opening quotation from Benjamin Franklin is " I must soon quit the scene." Farina died on the day of the autographing party for this book. Bottom line, it is a wonderful read. It is a portrait of the time, yet transends that time in many ways. If you do not find wonder in this book, there is something that you just do not get. I still mourn his death and all the music and prose that he did not write. So many talented people leave us too soon.
Rating: 
Summary: A severe disappointment - here are the reasons why
Review: I was really was expecting to like this novel. I am a huge fan of Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, Burroughs, Pynchon, and a slew of other similar and related writers, so I anticipated that this would run along those grooves. Unfortunately, I found very, very little to like in the novel. I would love to have a dialog with the people who have been giving it such high ratings. I haven't seen very many specifics as to why it is supposed to be good. Let me give some reasons why I was so disappointed: First, I just didn't like any of the characters. In particular, I didn't like Gnossos. It isn't just that he isn't a very nice person, or that he is a total jerk to so many people: he is boring. He was supposed to be cool, but he didn't say cool things, have cool ideas, or engage in cool actions. Most of the other characters were just as uninteresting, and to make things worse, were given some of the most unpalatable names that I have encountered in a novel. Oeup? Heffalump? Aquavitus? Fitzgore? Gnossus? Second, the prose lacked both beauty and rhythm. The sentences lurch and lunge like a driver alternately pressing and releasing the gas pedal. At best, it is unbeautiful. At worst, it is frequently impenetrable and opaque. It isn't just that it is often unintelligible; it is that one gets the sense that figuring it out wouldn't be worth the effort. Reading ULYSSES, one has the conviction that even at Joyce's most difficult, puzzling out his meaning repays the effort. Not so with Farina. And I couldn't agree more with the previous reviewer who says that the novel reminds him very much of the liner notes to an early Bob Dylan album. Except, they lack the humor one often finds in the Dylan liner notes. Third, the novel just doesn't tell a very interesting story. In truth, the story is about an intensely self-absorbed bore who takes too many drugs to no good purpose. Contrast this to ON THE ROAD, where dissipation is connected with a joyous passion for life. All in all, I have to say, this was one of the most disappointing reads that I have had in quite a while. I wonder if Farina hadn't also been a recording artist, Mimi Farina's husband, and Joan Baez's brother-in-law, if this book would even be in print. I suspect that its reputation is based more on the need we sometimes feel (and to which I have sometimes succumbed) to like what is perceived to be importantly counter cultural rather than truly excellent.
Rating:
Summary: college essentials: Richard Fariña and clean underwear
Review: I'm going to slot this in as the 5th greatest book of all time, trailing only CATCH-22, CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, CATCHER IN THE RYE, and THE GREAT GATSBY. "Ah," you say to yourself, "but I've actually HEARD of those other books. So why the hell haven't I ever heard of Richard Fariña??" Basically, because this is the only book he ever wrote. He was killed in a motorcycle crash 2 days after it was published in 1966. That's almost all you need to know, but the book itself is the story of Gnossos Pappadopoulis--beatnik, hophead, campus radical--arriving at a fictionalized Cornell University circa-1958, here depicted as a hotbed of leftist guerrilas and horny co-eds. Despite depicting a college campus teetering upon the cusp of the 1960s, the characters and events seem as real and relevant to me now as they must have to an audience of forty years ago. There are potheads, lesbians, radicals, junkies, activists, frat boys, and eggheads. Everyone is hustling everyone else, whether it be for sex, drugs, or grades, and there's the omni-present threat of campus cops and STDS. Other than a few dated references to Buddy Holly and Mose Allison, this book could have been written yesterday. Send a loved one off to college with this book and 30 pairs of clean underwear. They'll only have to laundry once a month, and they'll know exactly what to expect when they get there.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: Now im probably the only 16 year old that has read this book but its absolutley amazing and the way he wrote is breath taking a must read for anyone with an imagination
Rating: 
Summary: Worth it
Review: Okay, so it's got an introduction by Thomas Pynchon and it brings back a lot of memories for people-who-were-young-during-the-Sixties, but what about those of us who were "unlucky" enough to be born after that halcyon decade crashed and burned? Is the book really any good? Yes. Farina was, for my money, one of the best writers of his generation, even though one novel and an out-of-print (but, if you can find it, surprisingly good) collection of short pieces isn't much to go on. Although the book is actually set around the turn of the decade, 59-61 or so, there's an eerie impression that it was written twenty years later. For all the drink, drugs and college high-jinks, Death, War and that other lost horseman of the apocalypse, Responsibility, are never far away. The main character, Gnossos Pappadopolis, is a rucksack-wearin' hipster who attempts to maintain his Cool in an atmosphere of student demos and faculty corruption. Farina makes no attempt to sanctify Gnossos, and nor would we want him to, yet we end up sympathising with him. Pynchon's famous jacket quote says that the book comes like "the Hallelujah Chorus being played by 200 kazzo players with perfect pitch" - make that Barber's Adagio being played by a jug band and you're about right.
Rating:
Summary: An Accidental Act of Brilliance
Review: Over several years now, this novel has remained one of my favorite books. Richard Farina is, of course, better known as part of the folk music duo he shared with his wife, Mimi Baez. In my opinion, this novel is one of the more overlooked works of the last few decades. Published only days before Farina died in a motorcycle accident, and has gradually ascended into a sort of vague cult status by association with Thomas Pynchon. Anyway....BDSLILLUTM, is the story of Gnossos Pappadopoulis, a student at large, wanderer in the best sense of the term, a sort of anti-intellectual-intellectual (if that's fair). With ample drug-references and a sort of carefree (or at least, responsibility-free) cast of characters...it would be easy to give this book a sort of "party novel" category, when in fact, I think it deserves a more sincere category. Perhaps a "coming-of-age" story...but more than that, I think Farina manages to capture the essence of American influences during his own lifetime. I sometimes liken it (when offering to lend it) to Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," just birthed in a different era. I think I stand by that analogy, in the end. Both books share a similar delight in journey, experience and a coupling of the everyday with the arcane/academic/intellectual. The book CAN be a little confusing...but I think the obstacle is easily overcome if one accepts the novel at its own pace. I've been able to get a great deal more from the book on subsequent reads--one of the tests which I believe really defines a good novel...it's re-readability. I definitely recommend this novel!
Rating:
Summary: Farina's Timeless Classic: A Reflection in a Crystal Dream
Review: Richard Farina was a consummate songerwriter, poet and hopeful novelist, until his first and only novel burst onto the scene. Although a later book was released that was a compilation of some short stories, poems, and articles about him, this was the only book he had to stretch toward the literary heavens with. And it was indeed a smash! Unfortunately, Farina, who was married to Joan Baez' younger sister Mimi, with whom he had forged a folk duo that played and recorded some of his wonderful poetry put to music, never lived to experience his own wild success, as he fell off the back of a motorcycle on the way home from the publication party for this book, and was killed instantly. But the book lives, indeed it flourishes, and the paperback version has never been out of print in all this time, which is ample testimony to its continuing power, verve, and its timeless message, as well as to its beautifully written story. This is a wonderful book, one that has grown in reputation and stature over the intervening decades, and as another, much younger reviewer commented, it is one for everyone, not just for us greying babyboomers who were lucky enough to have discovered and experienced Richard in his prime. For all of us who have read his work, or listened to his music, or experienced his poetry, or for those of us who were lucky enough to see Mimi and Richard perform at the Newport Folk Festival, one can still hear the faint echoes of their haunting guitar harmonies and vocals, and we truly know that he is still with us. We know that he has truly left us a present, his evocative "reflections in a crystal dream". Although set in a time before the changes of the sixties started to roar, one soon recognizes teh signs and spirit of the times in his words and the storyline. Enter Gnossos, soul of the road, keeper of the eternal flame, and a pilgrim on an endless search for the holy grail of cool, and the college town of Athene (read Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell) will never be the same. Nor will you after digesting this wild, extremely readable parable. So, friend, don't hesitate; buy it, read it, but do so slllllloooooowwwwwllllly, savoring every gorgeous moment of it. It's all we have left of him, the only legacy of an incredible talent and a wonderful spokesperson for the otherwise indescribable sixties.
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