Growing Up Absurd

Background

The book was rejected by nineteen publishers before being serialized in Commentary, and was eventually published with the assistance of Norman Podhoretz. Goodman focuses on the erosion of traditional social institutions as a result of a world dominated by large corporations which fail to provide a meaningful existence to their workers.

Influence

Growing Up Absurd has been compared to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955) and Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959) by philosopher Todd Dufresne, who notes that its influence can be measured in terms of sales figures: over one hundred thousand copies were sold in its first few years.