Reviews for Earth-hunger, and other essays

The average rating for Earth-hunger, and other essays based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-11 00:00:00 Carol Giannoni Sometimes I feel as though, for all his failings, there's no one I agree with so much as Paul Goodman. Other times not so much. When he's wrong, he's often really, really wrong (some of the logic in "The May Pamphlet" isn't just naive and absurd-- it's farcical. Not to mention terribly written, though it's from 1945 and his essays from the 60s are faaaaar more eloquent), but when he's right, it's like he's turned on a light that makes sense of all human endeavour. Sometimes these two things can happen in the same essay (ie, "The May Pamphlet" as well as others here). It's puzzling. I strongly disagree with a bunch of his ideas and even more strongly agree with others, to the point that they seem worth building a religion around. Surely a brilliant man, surely human with all the fallibility that brings with it. Surely worth reading.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-10-20 00:00:00 William Ferguson Ii Boy, am I glad I read this. I gave it three stars, not because its not crucial or very moving (nearly every page demands I underline and put stars next to brilliant thoughts), but because he tends to meander from brilliant point to brilliant point with a vocabulary heavy in the radical psychological ruminations of the 1960s. This tended to slow me down. Either way, the books make me hopeful for our current situation in the 2020s, and I can see how Ursula K. LeGuin and David Graeber also read his work and expounded on many of his core ideas of consensual society, the means being the ends, and the right of the individual to be the instrument of permanent social revolution.