Profile of Richard Farina on Famous Like Me

Richard George Fariña ( March 8, 1937 - April 30, 1966 ) was an American writer and folksinger. He was a figure in both the counter culture scene of the early- to mid-sixties as well as the budding folk rock scene of the same time.

Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. Later, he earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an Engineering major, but later switching to English. While he was there he published a few short stories for some of the local literary magazines as well as for magazines such as The Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle. He was suspended for alleged participation in a student demonstration, and, after he returned to school, ultimately dropped out.

He is best known for his novel Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up To Me (1966). The novel is a comic picaresque story of Gnossos Pappadoupoulis, and takes place in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an upstate New York university. It has become somewhat of a cult classic among those who follow sixties and counterculture literature.

Fariña's lifestyle was one of a beatnik combined with that of a hippie. He was a proponent of using substances such as LSD and other mind-altering drugs.

He was a contemporary and good friend of Thomas Pynchon at Cornell University. Pynchon, who later dedicated his most well-known book Gravity's Rainbow (1973) to his friend, described Farina's novel as "coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch." Pynchon also wrote an introduction to a recent paperback version of Been Down....

Fariña was also a close friend of Bob Dylan — their friendship is the topic of a book by David Hadju called Positively Fourth Street. Some observers have, however, speculated that Dylan's philippic ballad "Positively 4th Street" was directed at Fariña, and that Fariña's bitter song "Morgan The Pirate" was a response directed at Dylan. (Numerous other targets for these songs have been suggested, though, and the true identities involved, if indeed any, will probably never be known.)

He married Mimi Baez, Joan Baez' younger sister, in April of 1963, and the two of them became a successful folk music recording act. As a musician, Fariña's primary instrument was the mountain dulcimer. Mimi Fariña was a fine singer and guitarist.

Due to his short life, Fariña's musical output was limited. He released three albums, one posthumously (all under the name Richard and Mimi Fariña). Fariña, like Dylan and others at this time, was considerd a protest singer, and a number of his songs are overtly political. Several critics have considered Fariña to be one of the top talents to emerge from the 1960's Greenwich Village folk music scene. ("If Richard had survived that motorcycle accident, he would have easily given Dylan a run for his money." -- Ed Ward). His best-known song is probably "Pack Up Your Sorrows".

Fariña died in a motorcycle accident on April 30, 1966, in Carmel, California two days after publication of his first novel.

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