From the publication of Growing Up Absurd in 1960 until his death in 1972, Paul Goodman had the ear of the young radicals of the New Left, pouring forth books and articles on education, technology, decentralization, and of course, the war in Vietnam. Yet Goodman saw himself primarily as an artist rather than a political thinker or sociologist, and many of his books, even during the 1960’s, were works of poetry, drama, and fiction. He had also practiced as a psychotherapist and joined with Frederick Perls and Ralph Hefferline in producing a new synthesis in psychological thought, Gestalt therapy, which has since become an international movement. In an age of specialization, few writers have taken on so broad a range of concerns.
Crazy Hope and Finite Experience is a final summing up of the thought and life of this self-described “old-fashioned man of letters.” This book brings together for the first time five personal essays, all written near the end of his life, in which Goodman discusses his sense of the world and how he was “in” it, politics, his spiritual and religious attitude, his sexuality, and his calling as a literary artist.
For those already familiar with one or another aspect of his work, Goodman’s self-assessment will provide new insight into the credo that underlies his whole career. For those learning about him for the firs time, it offers a vivid sense of the man and his perspective. And for psychotherapists – especially Gestalt therapists – the book will fill in the picture of Goodman as a theorist whose work was crucial to the development of a new approach to therapy.
Taylor Stoehr, Paul Goodman’s friend and literary executor, has edited many volumes of his fiction, poetry, and social commentary, the most recent being Drawing the Line Once Again: Paul Goodman’s Anarchist Writings and The Paul Goodman Reader, both published by PM Press. In addition to Here Now Next: Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy, he has authored numerous shorter studies of Goodman’s writings on community planning, media, literature, psychotherapy, and radical politics. An emeritus professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Stoehr is also the author of half a dozen other books of literary and cultural criticism, and translator of two collections of poetry – Ask the Wolf: Ballads and Bequests from Le Testament of François Villon (Unicorn) and I Hear My Gate Slam: Chinese Poets Meeting and Parting (Pressed Wafer). His forthcoming book (announced for Spring 2012) Changing Lives: Working with Literature in an Alternative Sentencing Program, documents his fifteen years working in the Changing Lives Through Literature program for probationers of the Dorchester District Court in Boston.
