Quest for Autonomy

Collier, Peter

Quest for Autonomy Like a Conquered Province: The Moral Ambiguity of America, by Paul Goodman. Random House 142 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by Peter Collier The fact that the times are terribly A...

...The important question is whether or not the emerging resistance, unafraid to say "no" to the absurdity it is surrounded by, can successfully recapture America from the technocratic, pragma-tist dream-killers who would have us believe that they control it...
...It is a virtuoso performance in which Goodman shows himself to be most adept at indicating the symptoms by which the conspiracy makes itself known: Our youth, from enforced school days to half-hearted employment, is confronted with blatant pointlessness in all its endeavors...
...These lively lectures, originally delivered to a Canadian audience, are all the more chilling because of the current Armageddon atmosphere in the United States...
...our scientific technology is made a lackey to the biases of those who fund it...
...The only antidote which Goodman can honestly propose—and it is pathetically small compared to what it is meant to combat—is in what he calls "the healthy upsurge of urban populism," particularly the youth protest movement...
...our cities are stalked by desperation and administered in such a way as to invite pollution and to make them totally uninhabitable...
...our government is the captive of an Establishment which, Goodman says, "is channeling our energy and enterprise to its own aggrandizement and power, and will exhaust us...
...Otherwise there will be only what clearly exists at present—an "empty society" bent on destroying itself and its inhabitants...
...His concerns and authenticity suggest that some version, scaled down to be sure, of the Renaissance man is still a possibility...
...Quest for Autonomy Like a Conquered Province: The Moral Ambiguity of America, by Paul Goodman...
...generally they resign themselves to existence in some specialist's niche and try to ignore the confusing larger picture...
...But more important, in all of his works he describes compellingly the manifestations of the self-motivating and self-sustaining "system" which is at the core of the modern American nightmare...
...Goodman, writing as a sort of native Savonarola, has a simple message: America is in a race with time...
...His most thorough, and probably best, critique of the manifold ways in which contemporary circumstance makes any sort of coming of age nearly impossible was in Growing Up Absurd...
...Reviewed by Peter Collier The fact that the times are terribly A out of joint is hardly an urgent reality for most contemporary intellectuals...
...Leaving aside its programs, Goodman insists that the sentiment and emotion behind this protest "must be taken seriously and compounded with...
...Paul Goodman, therefore, is all the more unusual...
...Goodman's dogged and often eloquent attack against the destructive aimlessness of so much of modern life is one which America itself makes continually relevant...
...And now, in Like a Conquered Province, Goodman again traces the progress of the conspiracy which would put autonomy beyond the reach, and perhaps even the desire, of the average American...
...The word he uses time and again to characterize this system is "absurd...
...The charnel-house we are creating in Vietnam—creating, to be sure, with typical American good nature and naivete—stands behind Goodman's criticism, giving it a gloomy credence and making it all the more mandatory that his message be heeded...

Vol. 31 • October 1967 • No. 10


 
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