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Parents' Day
A teacher at an experimental boarding school in the state of New York during World War II risks exposure and punishment when he pursues a relationship with a male student.
1985 edition illustrated by Percival Goodman, with an afterword by Taylor Stoehr
1985 edition illustrated by Percival Goodman, with an afterword by Taylor Stoehr
271 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1984
26 people want to read
About the author
Paul Goodman
215 books116 followersPaul Goodman was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decentralization, democracy, education, media, politics, psychology, technology, urban planning, and war. As a humanist and self-styled man of letters, his works often addressed a common theme of the individual citizen's duties in the larger society, and the responsibility to exercise autonomy, act creatively, and realize one's own human nature.
Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Goodman was raised by his aunts and sister and attended City College of New York. As an aspiring writer, he wrote and published poems and fiction before receiving his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He returned to writing in New York City and took sporadic magazine writing and teaching jobs, several of which he lost for his overt bisexuality and World War II draft resistance. Goodman discovered anarchism and wrote for libertarian journals. His radicalism was rooted in psychological theory. He co-wrote the theory behind Gestalt therapy based on Wilhelm Reich's radical Freudianism and held psychoanalytic sessions through the 1950s while continuing to write prolifically.
His 1960 book of social criticism, Growing Up Absurd, established his importance as a mainstream, antiestablishment cultural theorist. Goodman became known as "the philosopher of the New Left" and his anarchistic disposition was influential in 1960s counterculture and the free school movement. Despite being the foremost American intellectual of non-Marxist radicalism in his time, his celebrity did not endure far beyond his life. Goodman is remembered for his utopian proposals and principled belief in human potential.
Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Goodman was raised by his aunts and sister and attended City College of New York. As an aspiring writer, he wrote and published poems and fiction before receiving his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He returned to writing in New York City and took sporadic magazine writing and teaching jobs, several of which he lost for his overt bisexuality and World War II draft resistance. Goodman discovered anarchism and wrote for libertarian journals. His radicalism was rooted in psychological theory. He co-wrote the theory behind Gestalt therapy based on Wilhelm Reich's radical Freudianism and held psychoanalytic sessions through the 1950s while continuing to write prolifically.
His 1960 book of social criticism, Growing Up Absurd, established his importance as a mainstream, antiestablishment cultural theorist. Goodman became known as "the philosopher of the New Left" and his anarchistic disposition was influential in 1960s counterculture and the free school movement. Despite being the foremost American intellectual of non-Marxist radicalism in his time, his celebrity did not endure far beyond his life. Goodman is remembered for his utopian proposals and principled belief in human potential.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 15, 2022
2.5, rounded down.
The author, better known as a poet, philosopher and one of the co-founders of Gestalt therapy, has penned one of the oddest books to come out of the post-war years. Written in '46-47, but (barely) published in 1951, it is as much a memoir of the year he spent teaching at the progressive Black Mountain College, as it is a standard novel. At several points I considered DNF-ing it, and in retrospect, am not so sure I shouldn't have.
The endless navel-gazing, punctuated by spells of philosophizing and incomprehensible verse, detracts greatly from what I was really interested in - the portrait of a frustrated teacher attempting to deal with his forbidden love for a 17-year-old male student. That does figure in the book, and is one of the main threads, but it isn't the pivotal plot point I was expecting it to be.
The author, better known as a poet, philosopher and one of the co-founders of Gestalt therapy, has penned one of the oddest books to come out of the post-war years. Written in '46-47, but (barely) published in 1951, it is as much a memoir of the year he spent teaching at the progressive Black Mountain College, as it is a standard novel. At several points I considered DNF-ing it, and in retrospect, am not so sure I shouldn't have.
The endless navel-gazing, punctuated by spells of philosophizing and incomprehensible verse, detracts greatly from what I was really interested in - the portrait of a frustrated teacher attempting to deal with his forbidden love for a 17-year-old male student. That does figure in the book, and is one of the main threads, but it isn't the pivotal plot point I was expecting it to be.
January 19, 2026
This is a difficult novel to review because ever since its republication back in 1986 it has been presented as the GR synopsis says as the tale of 'A teacher at an experimental boarding school in the state of New York during World War II risks exposure and punishment when he pursues a relationship with a male student' which presents it as a post war 'gay' novel but it is nothing of the sort or at least only very vestigially. To understand the novel one needs to read the synopsis provided by the author on the jacket cover of the first edition of this novel:
'Parents Day is the story of an unhappy teacher in an unhappy school. Strength thru Joy has been discredited, but not in education. The protagonist, of unusual strength and strang joys, comes to grips with children who are not afraid to say what they think and adults who are.
'Parents Day is therefore a violent novel, of a thousand deaths from stresses and strains. It successfully and poetically shows how children will solve their own problems if given half a chance and still fewer adults. The violence of adolescence is tenderly portrayed.
'Can a school solve the problems of our society-sex?-economics-community/ This school tries, and it might have some success if the teachers could bury their guilt past or the ubiquitous present.
'The hero of this book, if he is that, undertakes to support the children against a faculty on just one vital question; but that is enough for disaster.'
Without denying the story of a homosexual 30+ year old teacher in love/infatuated with a 17 year old student it would be wrong to place this story as the novel's central thread or to imagine that this is a novel dealing with 'homosexuality' - it would be not only anachronistic to use the word gay but untrue to the author who while never concealing his homosexuality was never part of nor possibly even a believer in the idea of being gay - certainly not at this stage. This is a novel of ideas about education, child rearing, heavily freighted to the author's experiences and beliefs. The novel was written as part of Goodman's self-psychoanalysis under a disciple of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich as well Goodman's own free association, dream analysis and writing this autobiographical novel based on his own experiences at a progressive boarding school and this writing exercise gradually replaced his Reichian practice. Goodman wasn't interested in homosexuality so much in the sexuality of children - which sounds very creepy today - but it was at one with a whole school of progessive education pioneered in schools like Summerhill and Dartington Hall in the UK and of course Reichian theory (very big with the founder of Summerhill A.S. Neil). Although I have little time for the whole genre of man/boy love stories this novel avoids the creepiness of such stories - though in all honesty it doesn't actually examine the issue of what affect, if any, having a 30+ year old loving/lusting after you might have on a 17 year old boy.
Personally I don't think you can get anything out of the novel except viewing it through the life, thought and work of the author Paul Goodman. But this is not an early gay novel and for it to be presented as such is less then honest.
'Parents Day is the story of an unhappy teacher in an unhappy school. Strength thru Joy has been discredited, but not in education. The protagonist, of unusual strength and strang joys, comes to grips with children who are not afraid to say what they think and adults who are.
'Parents Day is therefore a violent novel, of a thousand deaths from stresses and strains. It successfully and poetically shows how children will solve their own problems if given half a chance and still fewer adults. The violence of adolescence is tenderly portrayed.
'Can a school solve the problems of our society-sex?-economics-community/ This school tries, and it might have some success if the teachers could bury their guilt past or the ubiquitous present.
'The hero of this book, if he is that, undertakes to support the children against a faculty on just one vital question; but that is enough for disaster.'
Without denying the story of a homosexual 30+ year old teacher in love/infatuated with a 17 year old student it would be wrong to place this story as the novel's central thread or to imagine that this is a novel dealing with 'homosexuality' - it would be not only anachronistic to use the word gay but untrue to the author who while never concealing his homosexuality was never part of nor possibly even a believer in the idea of being gay - certainly not at this stage. This is a novel of ideas about education, child rearing, heavily freighted to the author's experiences and beliefs. The novel was written as part of Goodman's self-psychoanalysis under a disciple of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich as well Goodman's own free association, dream analysis and writing this autobiographical novel based on his own experiences at a progressive boarding school and this writing exercise gradually replaced his Reichian practice. Goodman wasn't interested in homosexuality so much in the sexuality of children - which sounds very creepy today - but it was at one with a whole school of progessive education pioneered in schools like Summerhill and Dartington Hall in the UK and of course Reichian theory (very big with the founder of Summerhill A.S. Neil). Although I have little time for the whole genre of man/boy love stories this novel avoids the creepiness of such stories - though in all honesty it doesn't actually examine the issue of what affect, if any, having a 30+ year old loving/lusting after you might have on a 17 year old boy.
Personally I don't think you can get anything out of the novel except viewing it through the life, thought and work of the author Paul Goodman. But this is not an early gay novel and for it to be presented as such is less then honest.
March 4, 2020
The narrative lens of Parents' Day employs a mixture of poetry, philosophy and psychoanalysis to tell a story which, not surprisingly, turns out to have more than one theme. Such an innovative technique in story telling is reason enough to read the book; how well it works is up to the reader to decide.
The unnamed protagonist leaves Greenwich Village in New York City during the World War II with his son in tow, looking for whatever work he can do. He lands a one year gig at a boarding school along the Hudson River where the most advanced ideas in education are being implemented in a consciously communal atmosphere. The new teacher finds himself in a self-contained world that, in its isolation, causes the story to veer between drama and fantasy.
In this rarefied atmosphere the new teacher feels free to reveal his homosexual orientation, a point at which the reader, aware of the social repression of the era, can rightly wonder at the fantastical element of the book. But it gets even stranger as the teacher develops a crush on one of the male students which develops into something more, all in front of the other students and staff, who simultaneously acknowledge and deny what's going on.
The author doesn't hit us over the head with this part of the story. It is in large part submerged in the prose-poetry and philosophical ramblings which ramble and submerge as they do, not just to throw a gauzy mist over the plot, but to pave the way for the second theme. This is a school, after all, and the parallel plot deals with the relations of parents to children, of what motivates parents and what it means to be a parent. Here the psychoanalysis kicks in. When the principal reveals he's the father of one of the students, could he really be?
I'm a little annoyed at the authors' take on what might cause homosexuality, but it marks a transition in American history. Two other books I've read, The Great Snow and The Lost Weekend, also take place in New York during this time period. Together, they represent a largely unknown early attempt by American writers to represent homosexuality in works of fiction. Each does it in a somewhat different way, but together they document the remarkable and frightening state of understanding that the people of the era had about sexuality. As the protagonist says here, "They're not afraid of homosexuality. They're afraid of sexuality."
I recommend this book for the perspective it gives readers into an earlier time, and for the unusually creative prose.
The unnamed protagonist leaves Greenwich Village in New York City during the World War II with his son in tow, looking for whatever work he can do. He lands a one year gig at a boarding school along the Hudson River where the most advanced ideas in education are being implemented in a consciously communal atmosphere. The new teacher finds himself in a self-contained world that, in its isolation, causes the story to veer between drama and fantasy.
In this rarefied atmosphere the new teacher feels free to reveal his homosexual orientation, a point at which the reader, aware of the social repression of the era, can rightly wonder at the fantastical element of the book. But it gets even stranger as the teacher develops a crush on one of the male students which develops into something more, all in front of the other students and staff, who simultaneously acknowledge and deny what's going on.
The author doesn't hit us over the head with this part of the story. It is in large part submerged in the prose-poetry and philosophical ramblings which ramble and submerge as they do, not just to throw a gauzy mist over the plot, but to pave the way for the second theme. This is a school, after all, and the parallel plot deals with the relations of parents to children, of what motivates parents and what it means to be a parent. Here the psychoanalysis kicks in. When the principal reveals he's the father of one of the students, could he really be?
I'm a little annoyed at the authors' take on what might cause homosexuality, but it marks a transition in American history. Two other books I've read, The Great Snow and The Lost Weekend, also take place in New York during this time period. Together, they represent a largely unknown early attempt by American writers to represent homosexuality in works of fiction. Each does it in a somewhat different way, but together they document the remarkable and frightening state of understanding that the people of the era had about sexuality. As the protagonist says here, "They're not afraid of homosexuality. They're afraid of sexuality."
I recommend this book for the perspective it gives readers into an earlier time, and for the unusually creative prose.
April 30, 2021
Gay teacher, recently separated from his wife, takes up a job in a progressive school in a rural locality, where he proceeds (for he has infallibly predicted as much) to fall in love with a 17-year-old boy, leading to his dismissal. What makes some stories of age-differentiated same-sex desire creepy, and others not? Whatever the answer to that question, this one doesn't fall into the creepy category, perhaps because of the narrator's compelling voice, which is devoid of either self-hatred or self-justification.
Overtly and deliberately Freudian -- though, surprisingly, not intrusively so: somehow the filter of analysis doesn't detract from the immediacy of the report. I suppose, as a reader, you sense it's second-nature to the narrator, rather than literary artifice.
At times quite astonishingly smart, though you wouldn't necessarily want it to go on longer than it does.
Insightful afterword by Taylor Stoehr in the 1985 edition.
Overtly and deliberately Freudian -- though, surprisingly, not intrusively so: somehow the filter of analysis doesn't detract from the immediacy of the report. I suppose, as a reader, you sense it's second-nature to the narrator, rather than literary artifice.
At times quite astonishingly smart, though you wouldn't necessarily want it to go on longer than it does.
Insightful afterword by Taylor Stoehr in the 1985 edition.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews