Making Do
Making Do is a 1963 novel written by Paul Goodman and published by Macmillan.
 First edition | |
| Author | Paul Goodman |
|---|---|
| Published | November 1963 |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
| Pages | 276 |
| OCLC | 284498 |
| LC Class | PS3513 O53 M3 |
Synopsis
The "Banning the Cars from New York" chapter begins with a spontaneous youth handball game played on the wall of a store. When its owner calls the police to end the game, the boy chastizes the narrator for not intervening, for "betraying natural society".[1] The narrator emotionally navigates the conversation and later that evening speaks on a metropolitan radio broadcast about social issues and transportation, proposing how private automobiles could be banned and the streets could be reclaimed for leisure.[2]
Publication
The Macmillan Company first printed Making Do in November 1963. A paperback edition followed in October 1964 with New American Library's Signet imprint.[3] The book incorporated previous works by Goodman, such as his 1961 proposal for banning cars from Manhattan[4] and two short stories: "Eagle's Bridge: The Death of a Dog" (1962)[5] and "At the Lawyer's" (1963).[6]
Goodman referred to Making Do, along with Parents' Day and The Break-Up of Our Camp as his three "community novels".[7] The work is autobiographical fiction with its central character as a middle-aged social critic, i.e., Goodman.[8]
Analysis and legacy
Theodore Roszak wrote that the "Banning the Cars from New York" chapter encapsulated Goodman's ethos in building from spontaneous human joy into addressing a structural civic issue. It begins with Goodman's emphasis on unperturbed animal impulse, such as child's play or the narrator's physical love for the boy, and extrapolates into a larger societal concern and analysis.[8]
Goodman's fictional works received little critical recognition, according to a bibliographer of his works.[7]
The New York Times described Making Do as "a poor novel and a very interesting book" and that despite the narrator's similarity with the author, the narrator becomes a "bore".[9]
References
- Roszak 1969, p. 178.
- Roszak 1969, pp. 178–179.
- Nicely 1979, p. 91.
- Nicely 1979, p. 77.
- Nicely 1979, p. 81.
- Nicely 1979, p. 89.
- Nicely 1979, p. 3.
- Roszak 1969, p. 179.
- Finn 1963.
Bibliography
- Finn, James (December 15, 1963). "A Utopian Narrator Gets Out of Hand (Rev. of Making Do)". The New York Times Book Review. p. 22.
- Fried, Lewis (1990). "Paul Goodman: The City as Self". Makers of the City. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-0-87023-693-8.
- Gunn, Drewey Wayne (2016). "Paul Goodman: Parents' Day, 1951; Making Do, 1963". Gay American Novels, 1870–1970: A Reader's Guide. McFarland. pp. 79–80. ISBN 978-1-4766-2522-5.
- Malcolm, Donald (November 28, 1964). "Books: Five-Thumb Exercise". The New Yorker. Vol. 40. pp. 238, 241, 244–245. ISSN 0028-792X. EBSCOhost 23160032.
- Mudrick, Marvin (Spring 1964). "Man Alive". The Hudson Review. 17 (1): 110–123. doi:10.2307/3848254. ISSN 0018-702X. JSTOR 3848254.
- Nicely, Tom (1979). "Making Do". Adam and His Work: A Bibliography of Sources by and about Paul Goodman (1911–1972). Scarecrow Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-8108-1219-2.
- Pickrel, Paul (November 1963). "Rev. of Making Do". Harper's Magazine. Vol. 227. p. 128. ISSN 0017-789X.
- Poirier, Richard (December 15, 1963). "Rev. of Making Do". Book Week. pp. 6–. ISSN 0524-059X. OCLC 01536776.
- Roszak, Theodore (April 15, 1968). "The Future as Community". Nation. 206 (16): 497–503. ISSN 0027-8378.
- — (1969). "Exploring Utopia: The Visionary Sociology of Paul Goodman". The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. pp. 178–204. OCLC 23039.
- Sulkes, Stan (2010). "Paul Goodman". Critical Survey of Long Fiction (4th ed.). Salem Press. pp. 1892–1900. ISBN 978-1-58765-535-7.