Other literary forms
By any standards, Paul Goodman was a prolific writer. In addition to his novels, he wrote collections of poetry, several of which were privately printed. The most noteworthy are The Lordly Hudson: Collected Poems (1962), Homespun of Oatmeal Gray (1970), and the Collected Poems (1973). He also published ten plays between 1941 and 1970 and three books of literary criticism: Kafka’s Prayer (1947), The Structure of Literature (1954), and Speaking and Language: Defence of Poetry (1971). Goodman also wrote a partial autobiography: Five Years: Thoughts During a Useless Time (1966). This list, however, represents only a fraction of his oeuvre, which includes more than thirty titles. In addition, he contributed regularly to and served as film-review editor of the Partisan Review and as a television critic for The New Republic.
Achievements
Paul Goodman more closely approximates the Renaissance man than does perhaps any other twentieth century American of letters. A prolific writer in many genres—novels, poems, essays, dramas, short stories, literary criticism, education, sociology, and community planning—and the author of studies in psychotherapy, Goodman has entries under twenty-one different categories in the catalogs of the New York Public Library. He was not discovered by the reading public until 1960 as a result of his book Growing Up Absurd (1960), a spirited attack on the values of midcentury America. Because Goodman wrote in such diverse forms, he is not easily categorized. He shares with many of his colleagues, such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Bernard Malamud, a perspective that is distinctly Jewish: a feeling for alienation, a skeptical nature that is allied with visionary tendencies, and a penchant for social justice. As a novelist, he is best remembered for The Empire City.
Bibliography
Fried, Lewis F. Makers of the City. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Fried demonstrates that Goodman’s exploration of the ideas of community and of urban culture unites his fiction and nonfiction. Includes detailed notes and bibliographical essay.
Gilman, Richard. Review of The Empire City, by Paul Goodman. Commonweal 70 (July 31, 1959): 401-402. This short article examines The Empire City as a part of the comic tradition of J. D. Salinger and Saul Bellow. Also cites Goodman’s debt to Franz Kafka for his sense of the bizarre. Objects to the sermonizing quality of Goodman’s fiction but notes that his characters are intended to teach us how to live.
Harrington, Michael. “On Paul Goodman.” Atlantic 216 (August, 1965): 88-91. This short article is a general review of Goodman’s work and a more intensive examination of his essays People or Personnel. Looks at Goodman as an existentialist critic of American life and as a philosopher of the student revolts of the 1960’s, finding his belief in the goodness of human nature naïve.
Nicely, Tom. Adam and His Work: A Bibliography of Sources by and About Paul Goodman, 1911-1972. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979. A thorough bibliography.
Ostriker, Alicia. “Paul Goodman.” Partisan Review 43, no. 2 (1976): 286-295. Offers a good introduction to Goodman’s poetry as part of the general tradition first of Walt Whitman, then of the Black Mountain poets and the Beat generation. Notes the vigor and explicitness of his political and sexual poetry but points out that his lack of metaphoric imagination and decorum makes his poetry “unpoetic” to some readers.
Paul, Sherman. “Paul Goodman’s Mourning Labor: The Empire City.” Review of The Empire City, by Paul Goodman. The Southern Review 4, no. 4 (1968): 894-926. This meaty review is a book-by-book analysis of The Empire City . Examines its major themes of the education of a young man, looking especially at its themes dealing with war and at its...
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position in the tradition of the philosophical novel.
Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969. Discusses Goodman’s theories at length, seeing them as a major element in the transformation of American society.
Steiner, George. “On Paul Goodman.” Commentary 36 (August, 1963): 158-163. An important look at Goodman’s thinking and writing.
Sontag, Susan. Under the Sign of Saturn. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980. Contains one of the most sensitive essays on Goodman, treating his fiction seriously and suggesting his reputation has suffered because he wrote in so many different genres rather than concentrating on a single form of literature.
Stoehr, Taylor, ed. Decentralizing Power: Paul Goodman’s Social Criticism. New York: Black Rose Books, 1994. Collects essays on the diverse aspects of Goodman’s social thought.
Widmer, Kingsley. Paul Goodman. Boston: Twayne, 1980. A sustained attack, in which fellow anarchist Widmer condemns Goodman for his personality, his prose, and many of his political ideas.
