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Five years
Paul Goodman published his most famous book Growing Up Absurd, in 1960. Still, in the 1950s he considered himself a failure. He kept a diary from 1955 to 1960 and published it later as Five Years: Thoughts during a useless time. It may be his best book, a talented crank’s highly articulate complaint about the world’s outrageous failure to appreciate him. The unsold books, the unproduced plays and the unpraised poetry had created a kind of depression; he envied the success of others.
Five Years attracted even more attention for the account of his sexuality. He had a wife, two daughters and a son, but he also pursued a vigorous homosexual life, mostly through anonymous encounters. He thought his bisexuality the most normal sort of male life but it clearly failed to make him happy. “I cruise for sex,” he wrote, “then, when the bout is over and gone, I lust.”
Five Years attracted even more attention for the account of his sexuality. He had a wife, two daughters and a son, but he also pursued a vigorous homosexual life, mostly through anonymous encounters. He thought his bisexuality the most normal sort of male life but it clearly failed to make him happy. “I cruise for sex,” he wrote, “then, when the bout is over and gone, I lust.”
257 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
66 people want to read
About the author
Paul Goodman
210 books115 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 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 3, 2014
I'm not yet a Paul Goodman fan, at least from this, the first book of his I have read. Quite hard to classify, it's somewhat a diary, but it's also full of aphorisms and multi-paragraph socio-philosophical discourses. The organization is by years and each item is set off from each other with no transitional text. It doesn't gel at all, and is damaged by his persistent complaining about his publishers' lack of appreciation for his writing, and his subsequent failure to get published.
Among the now mostly irrelevant political commentary, and his uninteresting publication drama, there is the more exciting [leave that bon mot stand, ed.] thread of his sexual encounters with young men, in their teens and twenties, when he was nearing fifty. His public openness was groundbreaking for 1966 and did get him really noticed perhaps for the first time. And he predates and anticipates Renaud Camus' far more extensively detailed—yet somehow similar—sexual diaries in Tricks: 25 Encounters. But unfortunately Goodman's encounters sometimes project an unwelcome feeling of guilt: he was married with several children at the time, and he tried to pass it all off as normal sexual release, not worthy of untoward comment. From the perspective of half a century later, it doesn't quite ring true.
Maybe I should try Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society, his most famous book. After all, it was recently republished by NYRB Classics, whatever that may mean about greatness.
Among the now mostly irrelevant political commentary, and his uninteresting publication drama, there is the more exciting [leave that bon mot stand, ed.] thread of his sexual encounters with young men, in their teens and twenties, when he was nearing fifty. His public openness was groundbreaking for 1966 and did get him really noticed perhaps for the first time. And he predates and anticipates Renaud Camus' far more extensively detailed—yet somehow similar—sexual diaries in Tricks: 25 Encounters. But unfortunately Goodman's encounters sometimes project an unwelcome feeling of guilt: he was married with several children at the time, and he tried to pass it all off as normal sexual release, not worthy of untoward comment. From the perspective of half a century later, it doesn't quite ring true.
Maybe I should try Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society, his most famous book. After all, it was recently republished by NYRB Classics, whatever that may mean about greatness.
February 22, 2015
Paul Goodman wrote these entries over five years, between 1955-1960, and we find him wondering about Wordsworthian syntax, about Zombie formalism and the death of Jackson Pollock, conceptual patches and the "progress" of science and art, and many more. The intellect is endless, and writing its life. Here he's also on trial with himself viz. his erotic attraction toward black men, young boys, and his self-infatuation, too. On a personal level it's not a pretty picture, this life of the mind. The candor I find scary -- I think that's how it's intended to come off. He was brave to publish it even six years after it had been finished. We ought to have all of Goodman's diaries and notebooks available, but his was a messy life, and his literary estate has been rough and tumble. So returning to these I find myself grateful for the opportunity for a peek.
April 17, 2021
A collection of notes well put together. Fragments of the poetic-voice get to be good biographical material.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews