BOOKS
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sary measure of detachment, it exhibits, simultaneously, a morbid sus–
ceptibility to intrusions from the unthinking, unfeeling world. It is, in
short, a community possessed by its own incorruptibility: within its con–
fines all experience comes highly recommended because, it is felt, within
that magic circle ideals will prevail and innocence, as a result, cannot
be lost.
The style of the book, which is its least appealing aspect, is derived
heavily from
J.
P. Donleavy: it displays the same edgy levity, the same
corrosive strain of guarded self-deception. But Gnossos Pappadopoulis
(the hero, "furry Pooh Bear, keeper of the flame") is not simply a little
Ginger Man; the flower of a later generation, he is gentler, less decisive,
more overtly sentimental, and more innocent in cultivating his "ex–
emption": "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
valence.... Beware, I am the Shadow, free
to
cloud men's minds."
While Gnossos acknowledges the terrible virginity of his position (which
allows him to comprehend the world .only in fantasies of power and
revenge), he finds safety in it. But that safety disappears once something
beyond him becomes a possible source of joy or sorrow: in love, Gnossos
feels himself pursued by a murderous presence. At last, cheated by love,
feeling betrayed and raped, he must suffer the onslaught of his disillu–
sionment, the sudden awareness of cold pockets of venom as well as fear
down inside.
As a literary work, the value of
Been Down So Long
is slight; its
interest as a chronicle of a certain lost hippie scene-a circuit which
once ran unbroken from Cambridge, for instance, to the Lower East
Side, west to the Bay Area, then south to Mexico and back, or to
Tangier-is limited, if that is what the reader had in mind. But as an
expression, highly personal and honest, of the outcome of those feelings
of disinterested virtue and existential autonomy once encouraged (though
not often proved) by universities, and later condemned as "apathy," Mr.
Farina's book deserves some serious attention.
The focus of
The Crying of Lot
49, Thomas Pynchon's new novel,
moves feverishly between Southern California's shot-up cities and their
indistinguishable environs. It is a desperately funny book, conceived and
executed with an awesome virtuosity. The novel's tone and pace are
characterized by their absolute intensity, and Mr. Pynchon's essential
technique is suggested most simply by
his
descriptions, which invariably
cut from one layer of the culture to another: "What the road really
was, she fancied, was this hypodermic needle inserted somewhere ahead
into the vein of a freeway, a vein nourishing the mainliner L.A., keep-
