for Richard Fariña

A college buddy of Thomas Pynchon's, to whom Pynchon dedicated Gravity's Rainbow, Richard Fariña, would have been 70 this year. He was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966, two days after the publication of his only book, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, a late-Beat rucksack hero novel.

An early star of the 60s Greenwich Village folk music scene, here Fariña performs his best known song with his wife Mimi, Joan Baez' younger sister, and Pete Seeger, ca. 1965. Interestingly, Richard and Mimi's first album Celebrations For a Grey Day includes a song called, simply, V.

Pynchon's affectionate essay in remembrance of Fariña is here.