A LONG TIME COMING AND A LONG TIME GONE

Stories, essays and poems by the young folk singer and novelist (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me--1966) who died in a motorcycle accident three years ago. As is inevitable with a desk drawer collection of this sort, the quality is uneven, and unfortunately the heights show tentative promise rather than fulfillment. The stories are written in a style vaguely paperback-modern (""There was a touch of anxiety in his countenance. . . the most immediate and unrestrained invitation to intimacy she had ever known""). Concerned mainly with dying falls in and out of the wastelands of illusion--wars, established apathy, self sex-aminations--the brief tales celebrate congenial stances and attitudes rather than trace the subtleties of personality and behavior. The ""essays,"" which review high points in the author's folk-protest scene, are endemically interesting. The poetry, while tangled with unwieldy, derivative conceits ("". . . your dark body's book"") nonetheless are distinguished by a more aggressive stretch toward a liberating expression. To the extent that Farina has become ""campus legend,"" this collection will find its appropriate audience.