Richard Farina |
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Richard Fariña was killed in a motorcycle accident in Carmel, California, on April 30, 1966—two days after the publication of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Mr Fariña was born of a Cuban father and Irish mother, both of whom came to this country during the 1930's, and he spent time with them in Brooklyn, Cuba, and Northern Ireland. At eighteen he worked with members of the Irish Republican Army but eventually had to leave the country. Much the same happened in Cuba, which he visited often when Fidel Castro was still in the mountains and again during the heavy fighting in Santa Clara and while the revlutionary army was entering Havana. From the time Mr. Fariña left Cornell University in 1959 until late 1963 he lived in London and Paris. The author wrote that he made his living from "music, street-singing, script-writing, acting, a little smuggling, anything to hang on. Lost thirty pounds." In 1963 Mr. Fariña married Mimi Baez and returned to California, where he finished Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. His shorter work appeared in such magazines as Poetry, The Atlantic, and Mademoiselle, and his plays were produced at Cornell and at The Image Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Also a respected folk-rock singer and composer, Mr. Fariña appeared with his wife at the Newport Folk Festical and on tour, and two of their record albums were released. The first was chosen one of the ten best folk records of 1965 by The New York Times, and that newspaper called the second, Reflections in a Crystal Wind, "wild, imaginative, poetic, surprising." A posthumous collection of his writings, Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone, was published in 1969.
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