The full title, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society, explains it: this is writer and intellectual Paul Goodman's inventory of social ills leading kids to rebel, drop out, and be generally dysfunctional in the 1950s. Nothing escapes his criticism: poor city planning, the lack of meaningful work, kids' intellectually starved education, churches born of hierarchy and dogma rather than community--he calls out each and every failed institution and stunted revolution as he defends the angry and resigned.
I read Growing Up Absurd at the same time I took an interest in "Leave it to Beaver" reruns. Watching June Cleaver fret over young Theodor arriving home from school ten minutes late or Wally changing his hairstyle shows, I think, the kind of anxiety Goodman was responding to--anxiety egged on by starched social pundits in horn-rimmed glasses cautioning middle class parents about the troubled young man in the black leather jacket that might emerge from their own child. To these parents Goodman essentially says, Of course you don't understand them; they reject everything you've spent your life dealing with, negotiating, rationalizing, and accepting. And for good reason!
Goodman assumes the audience shares his progressive views, and some sections are confusing, as if written hastily. Plus, the negativity made this a pretty tough read. I found greater value in its being a historical document more so than spot-on social criticism.
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