The Society I Live in Is Mine

Add links
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Society I Live in Is Mine
OCLC
419522

The Society I Live in Is Mine is a 1963 book of

anarchist position in wanting to spur individual initiative, oppose supreme power
, and experiment with social alternatives.

Goodman wrote to a variety of officials and New York publications and includes his commentary on these letters, such as whether they were printed. He also includes a number of book reviews and reprinted essays from

Horizon Press
published the book. Critics were heartened by Goodman's approach to civics but differed on whether Goodman's method was egotistical or entertaining.

Contents and themes

"The society in which I live is mine, open to my voice and action, or I do not live there at all. The government, the school board, the church, the university, the world of publishing and communications, are my agencies as a citizen. To the extent that they are not my agencies, at least open to my voice and action, I am entirely in revolutionary opposition to them and I think they should be wiped off the slate."

Paul Goodman[1][2]

The Society I Live in Is Mine is a collection of social commentary ephemera by Paul Goodman, including

letters to the editor, essays, and speeches both published and unpublished in newspapers and magazines. Much of the content is written to address the general public[3] with the intent to urge others to become more alert and intervening citizens by his own example.[4] Goodman describes the collection as "angry letters on public morals and politics"[5] written to "influence the general consensus".[4] He is appalled by how few people self-regard as citizens and instead view society as machinery of authorities in which they participate. Goodman intends to prove that by becoming heard, people can more fully participate in and enjoy their society.[6] A multitude of authentic, concerned citizens is Goodman's panacea for a society dulled by standardization, neglect, and injustice.[1]

The book includes many letters to publications and public officials, and some speeches and reviews.

United Nations Secretary General on citizen demonstrations.[6] His proposals are not always pleasing; the text contains notes disclosing where his recipients did not print or acknowledge his letters.[6] The book includes commentary on the general effect of the letters.[4] Where his letters went unpublished, Goodman blames the editor's judgment or courage.[2]

His reviews include republications of commentary on books by

Vincent Riccio and Bill Slocum (All the Way Down: The Violent Underworld of Street Gangs), and Robert Penn Warren (Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South).[10] Goodman's reprinted essays from Dissent and Liberation include "Reflections on Literature as a Minor Art", "A Tour of South Africa", and "Format and Anxiety".[11]

The range of topics covered in his correspondence has no strict categorization

peace marches in response to war,[2] dividing cities into village neighborhoods, offering informal apprenticeships for adolescents, encouraging sex,[12] reducing school administration, and experimenting with small classes and amateur teachers.[13][15]

He focuses particularly on education

dropouts in institutions like schools and would rather provide them with another way to live decently.[16] Goodman argues against literacy, which he sees as having "no practical importance" in societal decision-making, used mainly to advertise and campaign to individuals.[5]

Publication

The author, around the time of publication

Compulsory Mis-education the next year (1964).[19] By the time of the book's publication, Goodman's social criticism already had a considerable following among American youth.[4]

Reception and legacy

Reviewers commented on Goodman's role as a

The San Francisco Examiner as crankiness[5] and to Price as intellectual vanity.[2] Price called the book an "exercise in ego fulfillment" in which Goodman postures extravagantly, dismisses his detractors, and stifles debate, wearing down the reader.[2] Hentoff, however, felt that Goodman’s hectoring insistence is what made him one of American society’s most thoroughly independent minds.[16]

Thinkers like Goodman who break out of traditional patterns of thought, wrote the Washington Evening Star, are "destined to perpetrate one outrage after another".[20] The critic found Goodman's positions to be sensible yet extreme, such that he could appreciate the proposals but struggled to agree fully.[20] Goodman's solutions, to Hentoff, were debatable or impossible, requiring "a prior social revolution that he does not know how to instigate".[16]

As a book of ephemera, Price considered the book to be unfocused and did not think Goodman's old letters needed republication. The reviewer figured that The Society I Live in Is Mine appealed best to those already endeared to Goodman's style.[2] The Santa Maria Times similarly did not think Goodman’s letters would pass the test of time, like those of Thomas Babington Macaulay or Benjamin Franklin, though Goodman's book of letters to editors was itself a rare concept and interesting experiment.[6] For Hentoff, the book was most valuable for its distillation of Goodman's central ideas, but it also appealed as entertainment, to witness Goodman's "indignant, sardonic, and often devastatingly accurate assaults",[4] for example, his commentary on cultural absurdities like a preschool television program lacking the spontaneity of childhood, or a school of science running a shelter drill that provided no actual shelter to children in event of a bombing.[16] The New Yorker agreed that Goodman was funnier than he realized.[12] Goodman is readable, said Hentoff, because all his years of fervent opposition have not turned him "chronically self-righteous or humorless".[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c Derleth 1963.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Price 1963.
  3. ^ Price 1963; The New Yorker 1963.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Hentoff 1963, p. 54.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Stanley 1963.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Hogan 1963.
  7. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 75–84.
  8. ^ Pearre 1963.
  9. ^ The Nashville Banner described Goodman's Baldwin review as "famous".[8]
  10. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 61, 70, 79, 82, 83.
  11. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 64, 77, 82.
  12. ^ a b c d The New Yorker 1963.
  13. ^ Widmer 1980, p. 83.
  14. ^ Widmer 1980, p. 163.
  15. ^ These positions recur in his proposals as a member of Manhattan local school boards in the early 1960s.[14][4]
  16. ^ a b c d e f g Hentoff 1963, p. 55.
  17. ^ Nicely 1979, p. 87.
  18. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived
    from the original on February 25, 2023. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  19. ^ Nicely 1979, pp. 73, 96.
  20. ^ a b Mintz 1963.

Bibliography

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Society_I_Live_in_Is_Mine&oldid=1204197002"