602
IRVING HOWE
in order to achieve these proposals, it is necessary to tum to a politics
usually dismissed as "Utopian." Now this strategy has \ its obvious
persuasive power, and Goodman employs it skillfully; but I can't help
thinking that it also involves some comer-cutting, for the truth is that
the transition from step to step in his argument is more difficult and
uncertain than he acknowledges. And except in moments of argument,
he knows this perfectly well.
At times Goodman seems wilfully fixed into an habitual commit–
ment: as when he rightly enough protests the imprisonment of Wilhelm
Reich but refrains from considering the damaging practical conse–
quences that may have followed from Reich's venture into cancer
therapy. Equally important, he gets into difficulties because of his
concern with the idea of community, his wish to reestablish authentic
human ties through improved social arrangements. He lacks the ap–
preciation for the creative uses and protective advantages of "root–
lessness" which a writer like Harold Rosenberg has. Indeed, so intense
is his yearning for the fulfillment of our "societal impulses" that he
can advance a proposal like work camps for the young without ade–
quately considering that in practise-in the practise of the existing so–
ciety-they can easily become semi-military, authoritarian institutions.
At the moment, Goodman's stock is high among the minority of
thoughtful students, and that is as it should be. His combination ot
intellectual range, human concern and radical persistence has made
him a valuable figure in American letters. The weaknesses and foibles
are there, of course, open to the mockery of people who have not
shown a fraction of his courage or gift. But the point to be stressed at
the moment is the firmness with which he has stood by his ideas through
decades of work. He is one of a vanishing company, the free intellectual,
and I think myself that it is one of the best things in the world to
be.
Irving Howe
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