Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd was a runaway bestseller when it was first published in 1960 and it became one of the defining texts of the nascent New Left. Goodman, at the time well into middle age, was a maverick anarchist who broke every mold, and did it brilliantly-he was a novelist, poet, and a social theorist, among a host of other things-and the book's success established him as one of America's most unusual and trenchant critics, combining vast learning, an astute mind, utopian sympathies, and a wonderfully hands-on way with words.Growing Up Absurd takes the crisis of disaffected youth as indicative of the crisis within the culture at large, which Goodman describes as being run by corporations that provide employment (when they do) but not work in any meaningful sense, work that engages body and soul. Disaffected youth was in this sense at the forefront of a disruption of a social order that was, if not directly politically repressive, humanly repressive, stifling the real human potential which, surely, a good society would serve to unleash, encourage, and pass on.
In his bestselling book Growing Up Absurd, Paul Goodman, recognized as the philosopher of the New Left at the time, set the agenda for the 1960s youth movement. Over that chaotic decade, he published new books every year while teaching to hundreds of audiences on college campuses on topics ranging from movement politics to education and community planning, from psychology and religion to literature and media. Simultaneously, a steady stream of poems, plays, and fiction inspired composer and diarist Ned Rorem to write, In an increasingly specialized culture, he shined as a Renaissance artist. His work still resonates for our own times of national crises, as he was America's most recognized public intellectual at the time of his death in 1972.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781590175811 |
| ISBN 10 | 1590175816 |
| Title | Growing Up Absurd |
| Author | Paul Goodman |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The New York Review of Books, Inc |
| Year published | 2012-09-11 |
| Number of pages | 312 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |