The Prototypical 60's novel = been down so long it looks like up to me

Just listed. This is a seminal 60's novel, if not one of the prototypes for what came after. It is required reading for anyone who claims expertise in things sixtyish. This was Richard Fariña's first literary effort, but he died in a motorcycle accident a couple of days after its publication.

He was an influence on Thomas Pynchon, who we featured recently, and who wrote a short blurb on the back of the book. This is the edition that college students took to their campuses by the thousands, with the irreverent cover that irritated an older and more staid generation of teachers and administrators.

Here is a quote:

They were standing on the perimeter of an expansive, seemingly endless salt flat, its parched surface cracked and fissured. Each of them staring at a single point on the horizon, delicately poising chilled martinis in their hands. The oil-cowboy with his Stetson eased over on the back of his head, a thumb hooked in a tooled fiesta belt; the strawberry blondes fingering bracelets and rings: the movie star cocking a well-trained eyebrow, striking a pose; the barefoot muse twisting the ends of her long, freely falling hair; Gnossos trembling, lips quivering, trying to control his voluntary muscles, tugging against the weight of silver in his rucksack. From the east, the ocher and orange sun bleeding profusely, steadily, into the semidark transparence of the dawn.

They waited, not speaking, standing line abreast, staring. They all knew it would happen, they had shuffled into the night’s end to be witnesses, but when it occurred they were nonetheless surprised. The sky changed, the entire translucent dome stunned by the swiftness of the shimmering atomic flash. The light drove their once tiny shadows to a terrifying distance in the desert, making them seem like titans. Then it shrank, the aurora crashing insanely backward, like a film in reverse, toppling, swimming into a single white-hot bulge, a humming lump, a festering core. It hovered inches above the horizon, dancing, waiting almost as if it were taking a stoked breath, then swelled in puffing spasms, poking high into the stratosphere, edging out the pale skyrocket vapor trails at either side, the ball going sickly yellow, the shock wave releasing its roar, the entire spectacle catching fire, blazing chaotically, shaming the paltry sun.