It is an expression of pure energy crystallized in print. If rock and roll is one of the most important cultural phenomena of the last ten years, it seems to have had little or no influence on recent fiction, other than stealing away most of our potential novelists. (Most of the likely writers born in the forties seem to have become rock and roll stars instead.) Very few recent novels read as though their authors had been exposed to any rock at all.
The only exceptions I have come across are the works of Richard Brautigan, Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone, possibly Pynchon's Crying a Lot 49, and Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. It is not Farina's occasional reference to Buddy Holly that makes him post-rock, but rather the impression one gets from the novel that it was written with the Stones constantly playing in the background. The book is driven by a constant mindless throb of energy.
The book's other great strength lies in the charm of the hero, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, who one automatically identifies with Farina himself. Gnossos of course is the expression of ultimate cool. He says on the second page:
I am invisible . . . And Exempt. Immunity has been granted to me, for I do not lose my cool. Polarity is selected at will, for I am not ionized and I possess not violence. Call me inert and featureless but Beware, I am the Shadow, free to cloud men's minds. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? I am the Dracula, look into my eye.
It is difficult not to idolize Gnossos somewhere in your deepest libido; he gets away with everything. He does incredible varieties and quantities of dope but never flips out; he treats girls like objects and never feels guilty; he can go to war and not be shot; he can act outrageously and never be reproached. He is the complete hip college hero, and the aura of this rubs over to Farina.
ALL THIS, THE exuberance and grogginess of the novel plus the songs on the first two albums, combine in the mind to form a beautiful image of Richard Farina. The Memories album, released last December, is anticlimactic, to say the least, and contributes nothing to the legend. It is a hodgepodge of unreleased cuts, live remakes of old songs, tracks Farina produced for Joan Bacz, songs sung by Mimi alone, and old singles. Only the singles, a remake of "Pack Up Your Sorrows" with electric backup and a song called "Joy Round My Brain," are as good as anything on the first two albums.
However, the new book, Long Time Coming and A Long Time Gone, expands the mythology. The fiction and the poetry aren't particularly good, but the transcribed song lyrics and the memoirs are some ofthe best of Farina as artist or hero. The myth becomes about as complete as I imagine it ever will.
And then this cat named Robert Greenfield comes along in the October issue of Cavalier and tries to tell us that Richard Farina was an ambitious grubby little punk or at best was a pitifully insecure social climber.
Why? We don't come up with romantic culture heroes as good as our imaginary Dick Farina very often. Why does someone feel obliged to come along and destroy them with one or another dispensable version of the truth?
The whole corpus of Farina composes a rich and total mythological system. It might not be cruel to Farina to destroy it. But why must it be torn down in front of us?
Why?