Cornell Days - Thomas Pynchon remembers Richard Farina
In a dim way, I had been aware of Richard Farina before I actually met him. It was the winter of 1958, toward the end of the school semester, and I was a junior editor on the Cornell Writer, which was the campus literary magazine. At some point these stories and poems began to arrive. It was a radically different voice, one that seemed to come from the world outside, surer, less safe, of higher quality than the usual run of submissions. Not many of the staff could tell me much about this “Farina” character, except that he’d been away from Cornell for a while, out traveling around.
Soon, in the back spaces of classrooms I happened to be in, I would sometimes detect this dangerous presence, not wearing a jacket or tie, more hair than was fashionable, always sitting with the same group of people. Quiet, but intensely there, checking things out. Eventually I connected him with the other, literary presence.
We ran with different crowds, so our paths only crossed now and then. One day in the spring I was crossing the Arts Quad and spotted Farina, reclining on the green grass with an open book. We nodded, said hello. “Listen,” Farina said, “I’m having a party Saturday night at my place on College Avenue, if you want to fall by.” Which was how I first encountered his remarkable gift of civility. As we chatted, a strange thing was also happening. Coeds I had lusted after across deep lecture halls were actually altering course, here, out in the daylight, to stop and talk to Farina. He was inviting them to his party too. Oboy, I thought to myself, oboy.
