Born in New York City in 1911, Paul Goodman labored in obscurity as a literary artist and free-lance intellectual until 1960 when the publication of Growing Up Absurd brought him fame and made him a major intellectual and moral force in the Sixties.
Grace Paley in her interview said that Paul Goodman was "not ahead of his time but in his time." A brilliant and imaginative social thinker, Goodman's Growing Up Absurd pretty much laid out the agenda of the early New Left. His "utopian essays and practical proposals" inspired the leaders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. His Compulsory Mis-education and Community of Scholars were important texts for educational reform efforts in the 1960s and beyond.
Gestalt Therapy (1951) launched a new school of psychotherapy later made famous by Goodman's co-author, Fritz Perls, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Goodman's courageous and unabashed frankness about his bisexuality when it was costly to career and reputation to be so open made him a hero to some of the early activists who created the modern gay rights movement. And Goodman's outspoken support, along with Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, for young Vietnam War draft resisters made him a beacon for young people facing conscription.
Yet despite his remarkable achievements and unusual life, since his early death at 60 in 1972, Paul Goodman has almost completely disappeared. His best-known books are out-of-print and new generations know nothing about this man "whose influence, if not name, is all around us" according to Noam Chomsky.
Growing Up with Paul Goodman will introduce the man and his work to those who came of age after his death and help ensure his place in the history of the second half of the 20th century. Hopefully, the film can serve as a catalyst to get more of his work back in print so that his ideas and example as exemplary citizen-poet and free spirit may become available again as a resource for our time and beyond.
Grace Paley in her interview said that Paul Goodman was "not ahead of his time but in his time." A brilliant and imaginative social thinker, Goodman's Growing Up Absurd pretty much laid out the agenda of the early New Left. His "utopian essays and practical proposals" inspired the leaders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. His Compulsory Mis-education and Community of Scholars were important texts for educational reform efforts in the 1960s and beyond.
Gestalt Therapy (1951) launched a new school of psychotherapy later made famous by Goodman's co-author, Fritz Perls, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Goodman's courageous and unabashed frankness about his bisexuality when it was costly to career and reputation to be so open made him a hero to some of the early activists who created the modern gay rights movement. And Goodman's outspoken support, along with Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, for young Vietnam War draft resisters made him a beacon for young people facing conscription.
Yet despite his remarkable achievements and unusual life, since his early death at 60 in 1972, Paul Goodman has almost completely disappeared. His best-known books are out-of-print and new generations know nothing about this man "whose influence, if not name, is all around us" according to Noam Chomsky.
Growing Up with Paul Goodman will introduce the man and his work to those who came of age after his death and help ensure his place in the history of the second half of the 20th century. Hopefully, the film can serve as a catalyst to get more of his work back in print so that his ideas and example as exemplary citizen-poet and free spirit may become available again as a resource for our time and beyond.
BOOKS
Little Prayers and Finite Experience
Speaking and Language: Defense of Poetry
Tragedy and Comedy: 4 Cubist Plays
Homespun of Oatmeal Gray
New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative
Adam and His Works
Hawkweed: Poems
Like a Conquered Province: The Moral Ambiguity of America
Five Years: Thougths During a Useless Time
Three Plays: The Young Disciple, Faustina, Jonah
People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System
Compulsory Mis-education
Making Do
The Society I Live In Is Mine
Drawing the Line
The Lordly Hudson and Other Poems
The Community of Scholars
Utopian Essays and Pratical Proposals
Our Visit to Niagara
Growing Up Absurd
The Empire City
The Structure of Literature
Parents' Day
Gestalt Therapy (with F.S. Perls and Ralph Hefferline)
The Break-Up of our Camp
Kafka's Prayer
Communitas (with Percival Goodman)
Art and Social Nature
The Facts of Life
Stop-Light and Other Noh Plays
Little Prayers and Finite Experience
Speaking and Language: Defense of Poetry
Tragedy and Comedy: 4 Cubist Plays
Homespun of Oatmeal Gray
New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative
Adam and His Works
Hawkweed: Poems
Like a Conquered Province: The Moral Ambiguity of America
Five Years: Thougths During a Useless Time
Three Plays: The Young Disciple, Faustina, Jonah
People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System
Compulsory Mis-education
Making Do
The Society I Live In Is Mine
Drawing the Line
The Lordly Hudson and Other Poems
The Community of Scholars
Utopian Essays and Pratical Proposals
Our Visit to Niagara
Growing Up Absurd
The Empire City
The Structure of Literature
Parents' Day
Gestalt Therapy (with F.S. Perls and Ralph Hefferline)
The Break-Up of our Camp
Kafka's Prayer
Communitas (with Percival Goodman)
Art and Social Nature
The Facts of Life
Stop-Light and Other Noh Plays
ARTICLES