Growing Up Absurd
LC Class | HQ796 G66 |
Growing Up Absurd is a 1960 book by Paul Goodman on the relationship between American juvenile delinquency and societal opportunities to fulfill natural needs. Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance.
Goodman's book drew from his prior works,
Growing Up Absurd became a
Background
In the United States, the affluent postwar
Among American writers of the period, concern for proper childrearing and education loomed larger than questions of workplace conformity and middle-class standards. They largely wrote in disapproval of what
Synopsis
In Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System,
Goodman contends that American society ruined the concept of vocation and created artificial demands through advertising. Affluent, postwar advanced capitalism boasted high employment but, Goodman writes, at the cost of reliance on "artificial ... demand for useless goods" that created unfulfilling, bureaucratic work,[14] without a sense of purpose or service.[7][15] Goodman believes that vocation that focuses on use, interest, style, and love has meaning and self-justified purpose, but that work focused on role, procedure, and profit tends towards meaninglessness.[10] Thus youth were rightfully disaffected, says Goodman, at the prospect of joining an adult society lacking fulfillment.[14] The chapters of Growing Up Absurd apply this argument to facets of life including "Faith", "Jobs", "Patriotism", and sexuality ("Social Animal").[8]
Goodman describes the period's mechanical social order and its feeling of inescapability and forced conformity as an "apparently closed room" fixated on a "
Goodman holds that "socializing" youth to play specialized roles in an adult society is inherently wrong for betraying their nature in the name of societal benefit.[9] Goodman asks, "Socialization to what?" If societal aims are wrong, the urge to socialize children to societal roles becomes circular and self-serving.[17] No amount of amelioration, he writes, including better schools or more social workers—would justify this socialization.[9] Those seeking to correct delinquency, Goodman says, should instead improve society and culture's opportunities to meet the appetites of human nature. Goodman faulted social critics, including himself, and academic sociologists for being content with studying this system without endeavoring to change it.[9] He posits that attempts to mold human nature to social order would backfire,[18] and that "freedom and meaning will outweigh anomie" if given the chance.[19]
To create a society worthy for youth to want to join, Goodman resolves, certain "unfinished" revolutions must be brought to their conclusion on topics including
Publication
Author Paul Goodman had a marginal
In late 1958, mainstream editors began to court Goodman for works of social criticism after reading his articles in small political and cultural magazines.
Goodman wrote in his diary that upon finishing his last chapter, he whistled "The Star-Spangled Banner" as he walked the chapter to his publisher. He saw himself as patriotically defending his country against "the system".[28] Goodman believed that the issues of conformity and alienation described in his manuscript were better expressed as political than as cultural issues. He wanted his political message to be read in advance of the 1960 presidential campaign.[29] The publisher decided not to publish the manuscript and asked Goodman to return the advance for delivering work unfit for print.[27] The manuscript was rejected by 19 publishers, including the publisher that would ultimately print it.[30]
In his memoir, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz wrote that he had been searching for an "opening salvo" on juvenile delinquency and middle-class youth deviance, a highly publicized topic, to mark his magazine's reimagination as a home for American social criticism. Most treatments of the subject, he wrote, described the phenomenon as "unrelated incidents of individual pathology ... to be dealt with either sternly by the cops or benevolently by the psychiatrists".[31] He heard about Goodman's finished manuscript and had a long-standing admiration for the author's writing and "colloquial directness". Though Podhoretz considered the initial excerpt he read of Goodman's manuscript to be uninteresting, he was impressed by the work as "the very incarnation of the new spirit [he] had been hoping would be at work in the world".[32]
According to Podhoretz's memoir, he excitedly called
Goodman was confident that his message was clear and agreeable. According to Goodman's later literary executor, in Growing Up Absurd Goodman tried a new style that was powerfully earnest, direct, and patient, whereas his prior writing had qualities of hectoring insistence and recklessness.[35] Goodman normally rejected attempts to revise his work, but approved of Random House's appointed book editor. According to Goodman's brother, these were the only edits Goodman permitted in his career.[36]
Random House published the book's first edition in 1960
Reception
Released to initially moderate acclaim,
Growing Up Absurd was revelatory to readers who had not previously connected the concept of work with ideals, wrote Goodman's literary executor. To this new audience, Goodman read as both fresh and old-fashioned: a contemporary man of letters's unabashed advocacy for a moral culture with traditional values of faith, honor, vocation. Goodman's discussion of the "rat race" and worthwhile work too resonated with college students, who had similar realizations, but was more distant to adults who had grown accustomed to the American nature of work.
Contemporaneously, public intellectual
Some critics focused on Goodman's ability to offer solutions. That youth want meaningful work, said
On the occasion of the book's 2012 reprint, one retrospective reviewer considered the book's core issues of
Legacy
Fueled by the changing desires of the times, including a willingness to address societal issues, Growing Up Absurd transformed Goodman's outcast career and brought him public fame as a social critic
Goodman bridged the 1950s era of mass conformity and repression into the 1960s era of youth counterculture in his encouragement of dissent.
Though some criticized his flattery of his young followers,[15] Goodman also played the role of their Dutch uncle, receiving the respect of the 1960s youth generation despite issuing harsh opinions about them.[57] His followers misinterpreted the source of the author's rebellion, according to Goodman's literary executor. Whereas the youth saw Goodman's outré positions on art, politics, and sexuality as principled defiance, they were more accurately Goodman's own idiosyncratic personal refusal to acquiesce to societal norms. Both interpretations built his affinity with the youth,[15] as did his emphasis on older ideals, acts, and individuals in which youth could feel a sense of justified pride.[57] Goodman often reminded his young audiences of their inexperience and encouraged them to pursue vocational mastery if they wanted to make a better world.[15] Literary critic Adam Kirsch retrospectively suggested that Goodman appealed to the youth by flattering their ignorance and sense of moral superiority. This demagoguery, wrote Kirsch, belied Goodman's responsibility as an elder teacher to help the youth to find contentment in an imperfect world rife with evils and suffering, rather than holding out for a perfect world as the only acceptable world.[21]
Many specific details of the book soon became dated.
Goodman's patriarchal assumptions about gender and treatment of women, exemplified in his focus on "man's work", were rebuked in early reviews and in the following decades.[59][61] In particular, he wrote that the book focuses exclusively on men and their careers because women, having the capacity for childbirth, did not need a career to justify their worth.[b] By his literary executor's account, this was a blind spot for Goodman.[59] Retrospective reviews reproached Goodman's analytic exclusion of women[7][17] and one cited it as sufficient reason to not want for a "Goodman revival".[7] Goodman's analysis of men similarly narrows to "manly" lad culture, excluding those from upper-class or non-urban backgrounds.[62]
Looking back on Goodman's career, Kingsley Widmer panned Growing Up Absurd as rough, rambling, and mediocre despite its insights and sociological vision.[6] Overall, Widmer considered Goodman's analysis of vocational and community issues to be unserious, and Goodman's thoughts on decentralization and schooling to be better expressed in other works.[56]
Growing Up Absurd was among the first works of American school social criticism in a 1960s body of literature that became known as the romantic critics of education.[63] Critics of public schools borrowed the book's ideas for years after its publication, and his ideas on education reverberated for decades.[64] Adam Kirsch wrote that Goodman's "acute, compassionate observations" about childhood under modern conditions and portrayal of "childhood as a pastoral paradise lost" contributes to the book's continued staying power.[8]
Growing Up Absurd was continually in print as of 1990 but was not in high demand as a classic. Although the book made him well-known,[43] Goodman's public interest peaked with his late 1960s youth readership. His influence never took hold in the wider public,[65] and within decades Goodman was largely forgotten from public consciousness. His literary executor wrote that much of Goodman's effectiveness relied on his electric, cantankerous presence.[43] Over time, the idea of "the system" entered common language and ceased to be a rallying cry.[57] Into the 21st century, Growing Up Absurd continues to appeal to "the adolescent's private sense of being misunderstood by a heartless and empty world" as young readers share online how the book has affected their lives.[8]
Notes
References
- ISBN 978-0-313-32393-5. Retrieved October 2, 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-674-04310-7. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
- ^ Mattson 2002, p. 113.
- ^ Pells 1985, p. 200.
- ^ Pells 1985, pp. 205–206.
- ^ a b c Widmer 1980, p. 65.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Flanzbaum 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g Kirsch 2012, p. 42.
- ^ a b c d Stoehr 1990, p. 488.
- ^ a b Widmer 1980, p. 67.
- ^ Stoehr 1990, pp. 487–488.
- ^ a b c d e f Stoehr 1990, p. 487.
- ^ a b c Galbraith 1960, p. 10.
- ^ a b c Mattson 2002, p. 114.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Stoehr 1990, p. 489.
- ^ Kostelanetz 1969, p. 278.
- ^ a b Widmer 1980, p. 66.
- ^ Stoehr 1990, p. 493.
- ^ a b c d Widmer 1980, p. 71.
- ^ a b c Stoehr 1990, p. 490.
- ^ a b Kirsch 2012, p. 43.
- ^ a b c d Stoehr 1990, p. 486.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, pp. 215–217.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, p. 246.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, pp. 246–247.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, p. 247.
- ^ a b Goodman 1966, p. 222.
- ^ Goodman 1966, p. 221.
- ^ Mattson 2002, pp. 113–114.
- ^ a b Podhoretz 1967, p. 297.
- ^ Podhoretz 1967, pp. 295–6.
- ^ Podhoretz 1967, pp. 296–7.
- ^ a b c Podhoretz 1967, pp. 297–8.
- ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 68–69, 257.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, pp. 248–249.
- ^ Parisi 1986, p. 141.
- ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 71–72: October 21, 1960, specifically.
- ^ Nicely 1979, p. 72.
- ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 61, 63, 66.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, p. 56.
- ^ a b Kostelanetz 1969, p. 275.
- ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 72–73.
- ^ a b c d Stoehr 1990, p. 494.
- ISBN 978-1-4411-0968-2.
- ^ Parisi 1986, p. 147.
- ^ Nicely 1979, p. 75.
- ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 92, 98, 113, 133, 140, 141, 151, 152, 173.
- ^ Ellerby 1962, p. 13.
- ^ Parisi 1986, p. 116.
- ^ Widmer 1980, pp. 68–69.
- from the original on April 3, 2012. Retrieved December 25, 2021.
- ^ Laski 1961.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, p. 37.
- ^ Parisi 1986, p. 1.
- ^ Stoehr 1994, p. 1.
- ^ a b c Widmer 1980, p. 70.
- ^ a b c Stoehr 1990, p. 492.
- from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
- ^ a b c d Stoehr 1990, p. 491.
- from the original on July 10, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
- ^ Widmer 1980, pp. 66–67.
- ISSN 0013-1946.
- from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
- ^ Parisi 1986, p. 99.
Bibliography
- Flanzbaum, Hilene (October 26, 2012). "A Spokesman for About Half of His Generation". ProQuest 1124447774. Archivedfrom the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
- ISSN 0028-7806.
- Ellerby, John (January 1962). "Youth and Absurdity". ISSN 0003-2751.
- OCLC 284500.
- EBSCOhost 83465834. Archived from the originalon April 2, 2015.
- OCLC 23458.
- ISSN 0307-661X.
- JSTOR 10.5325/j.ctt7v4k3.
- Nicely, Tom (1979). Adam and His Work: A Bibliography of Sources by and about Paul Goodman (1911–1972). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. OCLC 4832535.
- Parisi, Peter, ed. (1986). Artist of the Actual: Essays on Paul Goodman. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. OCLC 12418868.
- Pells, Richard H. (1985). "Conformity and Alienation: Social Criticism in the 1950s". The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 183–261. ISBN 978-0-06-015351-9.
- OCLC 292070.
- ISSN 0012-3846.
- —— (1994). Here Now Next: Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. OCLC 30029013.
- OCLC 5725979.