Five years : thoughts during a useless time.

265 Pages·1969·10.74 MB·English

by  Paul Goodman

five years
thoughts during a useless time
bg paal goodman
vintage hooks
a dfvfsfon of random house/nea, uork
VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, March 1969
Copyright © 1966 by Paul Goodman
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and Random House, Inc.,
New York. Distributed in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto. By arrangement with Brussel &
Bruss.el Publishers, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Foreword
I wrote in these notebooks when I had no one else
to write for or talk to. The notes have the kind of life,
and lifelessness, to be expected in such a case.
When I finished the first draft of The Empire City,
there was no chance to get it published and I did not even
try. Whatever bright schemes I had to improve my city
or the schools were also evidently not wanted by anybody.
There were no signs of political revolt, certainly not among
the young, to give me courage. The really desperate efforts
for sexual happiness that I made got the i'eception that
is given to desperate efforts in this line. But worst of all,
I suffered from bleak hours of nothing to do or plan during
lonely walks along the river or nursing a beer in a bar. It
was in these circumstances that I started regularly writing
down my thoughts in pocket notebooks. I was 45 years old.
By 196o, when the notes start to peter out, although
I was not much happier, I was much too busy to write in
notebooks. I was deeper and deeper involved in the dis
turbing love that I reconstructed in Making Do. I was
embarked, at 50, in the odd but grateful episode of being
a Student Leader. Several times a week I was on the aero
planes bound for conferences on social planning. Maga
zines and publishers had begun to seek me out. Encour
aged, I fell into the benign habit, when I was bemused or
indignant, of straightway writing angry letters to public
servants and the Times. These letters, published as The
Society I Live In Is Mine, date from the administration of
John Kennedy.
Thus these notebooks have the theme and tone of
an interim of withdrawal. They complain privately about
the world, and they pass judgment on myself. Neverthe
less, as I copy out the thoughts, I see that it was no in
terim at all, but myself as I have always been and still am
-only less distracted by other business and excitement.
Or bluntly, the unlucky truth is that all my life I have
existed in an interim, but only for those 5 years did I write
m pocket notebooks. The truth is that'I feel like an Exile
-from paradise; and I mean, as will be clear in the follow-
FOREWORD
ing pages, a very bread-and-butter kind of paradise. Um'
pnei hataenu galinu meartzenu, "but because of our sins
we are exiled from our land."
During the same 5 years I wrote most of the 8-line
poems that I call "Sentences and Little Prayers." That is,
on my walks or in bars, I either wrote little poems on
scraps of paper or I wrote in these notebooks. I am not
sure why I made the distinction between these kinds. I
doubt that the prose is more detached or unemotional
than the verses. Maybe I wrote poems when I had a "first
line," according to the theory of Paul Valery. More likely,
I wrote a picture, thought, or incident in 8 lines when I
felt that it could be so shaped and contained; but if it
seemed to be an epigram or to want a discursive explana
tion, I wrote in my notebook.
\V11en daily something in society had me by the
throat, I reflected about it instead of telling somebody off.
Obviously I had persuaded myself that nobody listened.
Today I understand that they do listen-indeed the corp
orations are very touchy-though of course it still makes
no difference.
These are not Diary notes. I did not write down
events or appointments to keep a record, like Gide. Nor
did I keep a sketchbook of ideas and plans for literary
works, like Hawthorne. I wrote down only independent
"thoughts," to concentrate my mind or distract my mind
(it comes to the same thing). Unlike in Pascal, however,
almost all my "thoughts" are physically autobiographical;
it is usually clear where I am and what I have been doing
when I think this, or what I have been reading and what
is in the news. It is not hard to reconstruct the man in the
city who had these thoughts. He is not inten.3ting to me,
nor especially likable or unlikable, because I am used to
him; but he might be an interesting type to some readers.
To preserve the biography, when, where, and what
doing, I give the notebooks in their chronological sequence
and have added almost nothing, except to dot i's and cross
t's. Within each notebook, however-it took me about 6
months to fill one-I have collected the scattered thoughts
of that season under a few shaggy headings like "art,"
"psychology," etc. The purpose of these categories is to
make it easier for the reader to read a few consecutive
pages without continually having to change the entire
realm of discourse. And since one does keep mulling about
an idea for weeks and months, the arrangement frequently
does result in a connected argument. But of course, as in
all my other writing, the categories themselves are inexact:
When I speak of "psychology" I am speaking about "so
ciety"; and I always speak of both of these in terms of a
"method" of inquiry and, indeed, in terms of "myself'
and what I am after; but to speak about myself is to speak
about how I am in my only world, it is to speak of "art"
and "God."
I am pleased to be able to edit at this time these
thoughts of 1955 to 1960. If I were closer to them, I might
still be too engaged in them, and perhaps embarrassed by
them, not to argue them further or perhaps to camouflage
them. A few years from now, on the other hand, if I am
still alive, I may not be able to remember what I was bat
ting about, and I hope I wont care. At present, however,
I still think that it is worthwhile to publish them in a
book.
P.C.
New York City
January 1 966
five years

May to November 1955
I. people, plaees, things
: There is a new fill of rock along the Hudson, south
of Dyckman Street-ash, glass, broken cement, bricks.
Where is bedrock, fertile soil, or noble ruin? But the earth
bears also this junk patiently. She smiles at me and says
she likes the messy animal man.
: The dog shitting a hot turd is mildly interesting to
me, but the cold turd on the street is disgusting to me. Yet
on a rural road the turd is not offensive because it will
decompose into living soil.
: Worried brow, piercing eyes, determined jaw: the
captain steering into the seas in a storm; the bartender
when the tipsy rough begins to act up; the psychotherapist
when the patient's syntax begins to break down.
: One of the cyclists is in panoply, with a coonskin hat
and totemic jacket, and on the handlebars foxtails and the
flags of the United Nations, plus horn, mirror, speedom
eter, and other accessories. The other cyclist has the func
tional style; the wheels have no mudguards, the handlebars
have no grips; he is barefoot and wearing a singlet and
threadbare jeans; he would ride naked if it were allowed.
: Of the 3 kid cyclists at the red light, one keeps his
seat, foot on the ground; the second stands on a straight
leg, resting the other leg on the crossbar; the smallest
stands, holding the bike; and if I could draw, this is what I
would draw.
: Her hands seem to crawl or dance on the piano. It is
not enough evident that they are touching the piano.
: The gentlemen who sleep drunk on the sidewalks
and in doorways are usually past middle-age, as though it
took a lot of living to get rid of the conventions inhibiting
normal lust for ease.
PAUL GOODMAN 4
: Portrait of a Young Gangster: seated in the subway
like a tired droopy child, his gun held by the barrel in a
tired hand, the handle drooping between his legs. "Nature
Reasserting Herself After Violence."
: Party decorations, streamers and balloons, can be
stuck to the walls or even to the pictures on the walls as
their solid foundation. But these pictures, and the painted
and plastered wall they hang from, are only decorations of
the steel and concrete structure. But the buildings of the
city are only party booths in the natural scene. (We dwell
as if in tents.) And that scene itself is Maya; I can think it
away. Contrariwise: When I was a boy looking from the
Palisades, I could see the hills of Inwood, Fort Tryon, and
Fort Washington as the big masses. TI1e railroad bridge
across the Harlem was interesting but small. Now all these
are dwarfed by the man-made structures, the Henry Hud
son Bridge, the Paterno apartments. Unfortunately, I have
been unable to achieve an intimate or trusting relationship
with these new foreground masses; and the hills I loved,
and love, have become tiny. My place in my city is small
because I do not love the things that are now big. I cannot
think them away.
: Like the bull who picks out his home spot in the
ring, when I have spread my gear on the beach and built a
fire I am at home, and could indeed stay forever, improv
ing and decorating. But if I must get a permit to camp,
then it is all spoilt, for the center is elsewhere than in my
simple election. I find it desperate that they will no longer
let me pitch a tent on Fire Island. I am trapped in New
York.
: After the full moon rising opposite the sunset, we see
on the next nights that the moon is an hour late, two
hours late.
: I was disoriented on the lake, for the east where the
moon rose was not where I had expected. At once I felt