About: Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is a novel by Richard Fariña. Parts campus novel and travelogue, the book was first published in 1966 and is largely based on Fariña's college experiences and travels. Set variously in an upstate New York college town, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and in the Western United States, it is a comic picaresque story of the protagonist, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, a modern Odysseus who navigates the challenges of early adulthood via an array of hijinks, psychedelic experiences, and relationships with various women. The book has become something of a cult classic among those who study 1960s or counterculture literature, and has been cited as a source of inspiration for many artists ranging from Hunter S. Thompson to Earl Sweatshirt to The Doors' album