Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society (New York Review Books Classics)

Somewhere in a literary review or book intro I read, this book was credited with having been a large early influence on the thinking of Ursula Le Guin.I would have found it an interesting and worthy read for that reason alone, but recommend it for anyone who is willing to step back a few years in perspective. The author assumes his readers have some knowledge of the times and the wit to read well. By that I mean that you must be capable of holding the thread of a conversation with a well-read, highly critical bisexual from 1958, without imposing modern prejudices over his words and thoughts. If you can only read through the lens of your own moment in time, set this one aside for later.As our in-progress 2020 economic reset amply demonstrates, both Goodman and Graeber, in their vastly separate times, are spot on about the heart-rending and soulless bs nature of most busy-ness in our culture. Goodman’s predictions of feudalist nightmare arising from an impossibly extended wealth and income gap will be particularly poignant to those thinking critically about our current plight.If you’ve any interest in understanding the antecedents of the New Left, my reco is Must Read.

Much of this book is still shockingly relevant to our situation - perhaps even, perplexingly, increasingly so. How good it is to hear a voice speaking out in favour of a radical human and social interpretation of the miseries and alienations of a certain section of youth (and the not so young as the survivors grow older). Even the acknowledgement that there is validity in the positions of those who find it difficult to compromise and fit in seems to be an alarmingly unusual position. That such a voice is nowadays rare might speak volumes about the extent to which academia and critical comment in general is compromised .I am not without my criticisms of the work - sometimes it does have the feel of an observer looking at a situation they are not a part of, although from what I know about about Paul Goodman's life , as well as his later poetry, this is not the case . But sometimes his apparent empathy seems in danger of slipping away into sociology .Some of the references seem a long way off and one cannot be sure of the details of the examples , which I guess is inevitable for a book that deals with some non contemporary specifics.But on the whole these are small points and I give it five stars .

For a younger generation of readers Growing Up Absurd does not have much to offer. Ironically, I can’t help but think if the author was alive today his verdict on gen z would be much worse than his indictment of the Beat Generation of the sixties . As a reader partly growing up in the sixties, not in the immediate surroundings of original beat generation environment, I always felt more kinship with them. Their stance on the social issues of the time: War against Vietnam , Racism, Apartheid. was not particularly Beat gen subjects but an overall part of the youth culture of the time . It seems to me it was harsh to bring an entire culture to the limited vocabulary of “On the Road “ literature. The author has much to say about his time and change of attitude on subjects such as Literature, Politics, Education, pedagogy, psychology, politics, sex, society etc. At the end of his analysis, one verdict comes out loud and clear: there is only one culprit for the wrong doings of the youth generation of the time: society itself.Interesting reading, certainly outdated by half a century.

Growing up AbsurdSloppy, Dated and ArrogantI'm getting tired of reading these kinds of dated books that were rife in the `50s and `60s. Books written in a self-congratulatory, prophetic, omnipotent, all-knowing tone, that implies we (the reader) are in need of a cultural or social guide to navigate this topic; because without one we would not have been able to perceive for ourselves the complexities of the socio-cultural or enthnographic dramas and narratives which form the content of this book, or reach the apparent points of clarity that apparently Goodman did.With very little reference to the Literature or solid data, this supposed, or should I say `self-appointed' `academic' not only tells us what is wrong with the world but then goes on to offer us his magic cure. All of which smarts of being subjective and rather naïve, not to mention terribly dull. For duller-than-dull is Goodman's (dare I say) `literary' style. His rambling, sprawling incoherent, unstructured juices just ebb, run and flow, flooding both the sibject and the subject's narrative; their voice being drowned (quite literally) entangled in the weeds of the dull and murky stream that is Goodman's substantially unengaging consciousness.In terms of homage to academe, it is not that I want Goodman to simply regurgitate the works of other scholars, to `read&repeat' as is shamefully the trend of faux-academia in this current epoch. But what I do want is more than a lazy rambling diatribite on what he saw as being wrong with America in the `60s and particular the loss of the American Ideal and the resulting loss of a generation. Now you may argue that I am saying this without social or historical context, that I am making the amateur historian's mistake of jugding history retroactively, and yes, I would agree with that position to some degree. But what I am really saying is that if this work were be framed as what it really is(anthropological musings by an unordinary citizen) and not what it isn't (prophetic and insightful wisdom shared by one further on the Way) - we would see Goodman for what he was, unremarkable in the hostorical record. I mean one would only have to compare this failed attempt at an ethnographic exposé with that of Ervin Goffman (presentation of self in everyday life) to really frasp my point here. That, until recently, the world had forgotten Goodman is not an accident, but merely appropriate. The very fact he rubbishes the work of Max Weber (who has clearly not been forgotto) in a few incoherent lines (p.130~) speaks volumes about the perception of Goodman's own self-image and that of reality, corroborate by the world-at-large (and please forgo the misunderstood genius a la Andy Kaufman analogy)!In summation, I can see no purpose to spend time or money on this project, it is simply not a worthwhile equasion of investment to retruns ratio. There is no overal merit unless to say that you read this unstructured mess and managed to get to the last page without having learned a single thing - except perhaps, how not to write. Forgo and treat yourself to something worthwhile.

And it is not just the school, the background of the parents, the kind of support both the schools and the parents provide and often don't provide are examined. Book is fairly old, and still applies.