Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone

by Richard Fariña, Mimi Fariña (Editor), Joan Baez (Foreword)

Richard Fariña's tragically short odyssey began in Brooklyn in 1937. Its places included Cornell University, London, Paris, Northern Ireland, Havana - once while Castro's army was entering the country - cities and countryside across America and Europe. Its roles included poet, composer, IRA revolutionary, singer, dulcimer-player, novelist - always developing and refining his own unique insights into the world and himself.

Son of an Irish mother and Cuban father, his travels seemed a journey to touch the world and then realize it in his writing. At eighteen he fought with the Irish Republican Army, then on to Cuba and then to college. He left Cornell to live in Europe, and, in Paris, began his widely acclaimed novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, some four hours - as Fariña described it - "after I finished work as a blind harmonica player."

In France he met Mimi Baez, and in 1963 they were married and returned to California. Performing together they helped revitalize the California folk scene, and the memory of Richard and Mimi triumphantly singing despite dismal summer downpour at the Newport Folk Festival has become almost a mythic moment of these summer concerts. Their first two Vanguard albums, Celebrations for a Gray Day and Reflections in a Crystal Wind were spectacularly successful. Their third album called Memories has just been released.


In 1966, two days after the publication of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Richard Fariña was killed in a motorcycle accident near Carmel, California. Having described the American Experience, Richard Fariña quickly became a part of it - a part with special and personal meaning for American youth.

Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone brings together the best of Richard Fariña's shorter writings, stories, poems, essays and song lyrics, many of which have never been published. Not only do they show Fariña's mature talent as a writer, they also serve a sort of autobiography providing a unique glimpse into his life and dreams.

Joan Baez, Fariña's sister-in-law, has provided a compassionate introduction, and Mimi Fariña has supplied notes which offer a deep, touching insight into Richard Fariña's journey - a journey we have all taken in part or dream of taking someday.

Jacket designed by Eric von Schmidt

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Music, American

272 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

Richard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger.

With an Irish mother and a Cuban father, Farina was born a rebel. He grew up in Brooklyn, pre-revolutionary Cuba and Ireland. At 18 he was associated with members of the IRA, and was asked to leave Ireland. At Cornell University in the late fifties Farina was suspended for his part in a student protest, but was promptly reinstated when fellow students threatened to take further action to support him.

Leaving Cornell in 1959, he lived in Paris and London, surviving by 'music, street-singing, scriptwriting, acting, a little smuggling, anything to hang on'. In 1963 he returned to America and married Mimi Baez, sister of Joan, and they became a folk duo. Their debut album was recommended by the New York Times as one of the ten best releases of 1965.

Farina was killed in a motorbike accident, just two days after his book Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me had been published. The book has become a cult classic among fans of the 1960s and counterculture literature. The novel also had a huge influence on his close friend Thomas Pynchon, who later dedicated his book Gravity's Rainbow (1973) to Fariña.

Reviews

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

the day richard fariña was the thrown from his friend's speeding motorcycle (that had been estimated, by police, to be traveling 90 miles per hour), he was celebrating his wife mimi's 21st birthday, as well as the publication, a mere two days earlier, of his only book (been down so long it looks like up to me, a novel). as fantastic a work as it is, this posthumous collection (poems, short stories, songs, essays, and diary entries) more completely illustrates fariña's talent. long time coming is candid, unqiue, and inordinate in scope.

fariña's legend often precedes him; he purported to have served as an overseas revolutionary, he was thomas pynchon's roommate in college, he married joan baez's little sister (with whom he made three records), he had befriended a young bob dylan, may have been the only irish-cuban writer, and had died at the young age of twenty-nine. the quality of his writing need not the boost of so renowned a reputation, however, as its character is evident on nearly every page.

"nothing
is good enough
for those who know.
providing
someone takes the time
to pass the word."

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories are reminiscent of Norman Mailer’s early work in style and political tendency.

Acquired Jul 26, 2000
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario

[beflygelt · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good short stories
very good essays
ok poetry

I was very happy to find this relatively rare collection available on archive.org, free to loan. This book collects Fariña's short writing before his death. When I finish his only novel I'll have read just about everything he ever wrote. Which is weird, and frustrating. Along with the novel, which I'm digging more and more the farther I get, this proves him an extremely talented writer with recognizable preoccupations (black American experience/racism; the influence of pop culture/experience as film; sexuality/ horny characters; mania/depression, also: the Korean War).

Highlights are the essays The Writer as a Cameraman (interestingly the camera is here something which objectifies, which the writer tries to "annihilate" to be able to subjectify his character), Monterey Fair, in which Fariña, Pynchon and Joan Baez visit a fair and end up at the stall of a far-right group and try to argue with them, and Joan Baez' beautiful introduction.

The first, eponymous short story is written from the perspective of a fat, frustrated American who is about to assassinate a successful black man.

Harry and the Celleluoid Passion is a story of two people finding each other at a party, the male protagonist increasingly concerned with feeling as if he's in a film - the last part, the sobering "reality" of the day after, is written in filmscript.

The Passing of Various Lives, set in Cuba, is a small family saga with Marxist undertones.

Of the poems only the Little Nothing Poems really spoke to me.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this around 1979 and don't remember a thing about it, but based on the list of authors I read in that time frame, I probably enjoyed it. Historical note: my Dell paperback does not have an ISBN.

[chacierrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Farina sings, farina dances, farina plays, in between riddles of dark and light, o sadness and joy.

The little inscriptions from Mimi are enough to make you cry, Joan writes beautifully in the beginning of the book too.

[Max Newman]

The Passing of Various Lives best one,,,,Baez and Dylan, Little Nothing Poems, Two Irish Stories all pretty good

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the Ireland and Cuba stories, and the Monterey essay. Man what a loss

[Richard Gartee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of stories and poems by the author of Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me was assembled by, and annotated with commentaries from his widow, Mimi Farina. Interesting for its historical perspective on better known folk singer and social events of the early sixties. As might be expected from any attempt to collect the remaining works of a deceased writer, it is rather uneven, some timeless pieces, some outdated; some strikingly good, some mediocre. It is also, in this day and age, unusual to mix poetry, non-fiction, and short-stories in one book. I liked many of the pieces in this book, but if you haven't read Richard Fariña then I recommend you start with Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me before this one.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me has been one of my favorite novels since I first encountered it; I was overjoyed to find this in a used bookstore, long after I'd given up on ever owning a copy of it. The stories and poems collected here, far from being an ephemeral cash-in on Fariña's death, are simply amazing. I truly believe he would have been one of the greatest writers of his generation, had he stayed alive.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say that I didn't know anything about him. I will have to add him to favorite author of all time. Just his way...