I’m happy to report that New York Review Books has just reprinted Growing Up Absurd (1960), Paul Goodman’s classic plea for the human scale against the postwar corporate and military-industrial behemoth. Especially noteworthy is a terrific foreword by Casey Nelson Blake assaying Goodman’s “unique synthesis of anarchist utopianism with unabashed cultural conservatism.” Blake identifies Front Porch Republic and New Inquiry as among those “reclaiming” the “sturdy tradition of American social and cultural criticism” exemplified with such vigor and intelligence (and occasional flamboyance) by Goodman.
Thanks, Bill, for noting this signal republication. My friend Taylor Stoehr, who is one of Goodman’s literary executors, has been steadily reprinting much of Goodman’s work. Most recently, in honor of Goodman’s centenary in 2011, The Paul Goodman Reader, which samples his fiction and poetry as well as his writing on education, technology and planning, literature, media and culture, psychology, theology, and politics. None of this work is dated. Everything I read and prized of his remains pertinent and striking. It was Paul Goodman who said that technology, rightly understood, is a branch of ethics and who warned early on of the ominousness of the precipitous rise in the prices of essential commodities–rice, in particular–after the second world war. It was from Goodman’s critique that I developed my lasting loathing for the most damaging high-growth industry of the post-WWII period–“higher” education aka the university racket. I could go on but will conclude with another big thanks.
Good news, tks for letting us know about it. If you haven’t run across it already: There’s a doc on Netflix Instant you might enjoy called “Paul Goodman Changed My Life.”
Dear Paleo,
Yes, it is a fine documentary. I wish that it hadn’t spent so much time on sexuality, however, at the expense of Goodman’s ideas about literature, economics, community, and morality. One of the many things Goodman said that I recall frequently for guidance, solace, and fortitude is his reply to being asked if he though man could be improved morally. He said, yes, but not much. I presume he meant that an individual person could improve, but that the species was much, much more refractory, perhaps hopelessly so.
Thank you for bringing it up. I’ve read 3 books that changed my life At ate 13, I think, that was #2.
Thanks for this, Bill. So many books, so little time! If the stack next to my bed topples in my direction it may cause grievous bodily injury. Yet I keep adding to it…
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