Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me  is a novel by Richard Fariña.  First published in the United States in 1966, the novel, based largely on Fariña’s college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque story that is set in the Western United States, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an upstate New York university.  The name of the protagonist is Gnossos Pappadopoulis, a modern Odysseus.  The book has become something of a cult classic among those who study 1960s or counterculture literature.  (More from Wikipedia)