Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Growing Up Absurd/archive1

Growing Up Absurd

 * Nominator(s): czar  17:33, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

While hardly a classic today, this book was once the bible of a generation, found on bookshelves across American college campuses during the 1960s counterculture as well as, years later, the cabin bookshelves of Ted Kaczynski. Growing Up Absurd was a paean to 1960s youth, written by a hopeful yet outcast intellectual finally finding his audience after a lifetime of striking out. Originally writing on the then-hot topic of rising juvenile delinquency, Paul Goodman defended the youth subculture that rejected adult society much as Goodman did himself, writing that youth had no business "growing up" into a world designed to process and spit them out, and that adults had better create a world of worthwhile ardor, with more meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance. Growing Up Absurd launched Goodman from the bohemian underground into a flash of idiosyncratic stardom in the twilight of his life, from lifelong impoverishment to the top tenth of American incomes, as he became a high-demand public intellectual namechecked in Annie Hall, a Dutch uncle to the counterculture and Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the philosopher of the New Left, and within only several decades, largely forgotten from American public consciousness.

Been sitting on this one while I work on other Goodman-related articles but read it again recently and I believe it's FA-worthy. It was reviewed for GA by in July 2021. Notices posted on relevant WikiProjects and my talk page. Let me know what you think? czar 17:33, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Image is appropriately justified. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Comments by A. Parrot
This is an article well outside my expertise, so it's an ignorant layman review, but after a first read-through I don't notice any obvious gaps in coverage. There are several awkward bits in the prose. In some cases the meaning is clear, and I think I'll edit them myself over the next few days so as not to put too many line-by-line notes in the FAC; please revert and discuss any edits of mine that you object to. I do want to highlight a couple:


 * "…juvenile delinquents should be led to properly regard society and its goals…" I don't know exactly what "properly regard society and its goals" is intended to mean.


 * "Also significant, where his prior writing had qualities of hectoring insistence and recklessness, according to Goodman's literary executor, Growing Up Absurd tried a new style…" I think it's best to omit the opinion at the beginning, mention Stoehr by name, and put that at the beginning of the sentence ("According to Goodman's literary executor, Taylor Stoehr, Growing Up Absurd tried a new style…")

More comments later. A. Parrot (talk) 03:29, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . I've edited those two. For any awkward bits that I've missed, please feel free to drop a clarify in the prose as you read and I'll double back to rephrase. Some of the difficulty is that Goodman himself was notoriously vague at times, so some concepts were equally vague in reviews (as "proper regard" was in Galbraith), but that's part of the challenge in why I chose this article. :) Thanks again, czar  15:09, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for your edits directly in the article. I wanted to see if you might be leaving additional comments, given the coordinator note below on time pressure. Appreciate your time, czar  04:57, 27 September 2022 (UTC)


 * The more I read, the more prose difficulties I see. Many of them pose problems of clarity. E.g., what does "pondered his own patriotic intervention in American society" mean? In "He wanted to identify his own personal fight, which he would then supplant in the story", the word "supplant" doesn't make much sense. And Lee Vilenski is right about the awkward relationship between the article's own voice and the opinions it's describing. I'm afraid the article needs a copyedit, one that checks the article text against what the sources say. I don't have full access to Stoehr 1990 and 1994, to which much of the unclear text is cited. If you do, you might be able to supply a copyeditor with the necessary excerpts, but that kind of back-and-forth process isn't suited to the time constraints of an FAC. A. Parrot (talk) 02:37, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Many of those are features of the sourcing but I get what you're saying and am familiar enough with the material that I should be able to copy edit such instances to clarity. Happy to share any of the sourcing with anyone who requests it too. czar  12:42, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Book articles are always tricky in walking the line between abusing the "X said that Y" construction and construing claims in WP voice. I've walked back my artistic license here so hopefully you'll agree this critique has been rectified.  czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The prose is significantly improved, and I think it's close to FA standard. I'll point out two smaller problems. Unless the book uses the term "late capitalism" (which seems unlikely, given the history of the term as found at the article about it, and given how anti-Marxist most Americans were in 1960), it shouldn't appear here. And "Unlike the American response, its release was panned in the British press" is a bit awkward, as the structure of the sentence contrasts the American reception of the book with the British release, even though the intent of the sentence is to contrast the American and British receptions of the book.


 * I notice a lot of hidden comments in the wiki text that look like your notes to yourself about things that should be added or reworked. If these notes no longer apply, they should be removed. If they do still apply, you may want to withdraw the article until you've fully dealt with all this material, given how long the FAC has already gone on. A. Parrot (talk) 01:54, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Rephrased to "advanced capitalism" per the source, though for what it's worth, I do think "late capitalism" more accurately captured the spirit of the text.
 * re: the wikitext hidden comments, most of those are left as guidance for future editors to better understand the source context and WP:TSI but to your point I've removed anything that could be construed as incomplete expansion.  czar  04:57, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, this FAC is open for a few extra days and I've put in the hours to make this ironclad, per your notes. Would you have the time to take a second look? czar  22:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I still see some awkward passages. At times it feels like it's written in a sort of shorthand that feels somewhat confusing. E.g., "…World War II radical prognostications of a permanent war economy and cold war". Were these predictions that the Cold War would create a permanent wartime economy, and were such predictions really being made even before World War II was over? The reference to Goodman as a "Dutch uncle" is a less complex example; the term is linked but not explained in the text of this article, making it confusing for somebody like me who does not know the meaning of the term and has to click away from the article to understand it. The sentence about media portrayals of youth culture, "with emphasis on teenage gangs, bohemian Beatniks, and reckless working class youth", feels strange, too. Those are fairly disparate subjects, and it might be better to turn the sentence around: individual portrayals of those types of young people added up to an impression that the youth culture of the time was "defiant, restless, disaffected, and seceding from social order".


 * This sentence is a particular tangle: "Literary critic Adam Kirsch wrote retrospectively that after flattering the ignorance of youth throughout Growing Up Absurd and posing the youth as morally superior to adults, it was no wonder that they lionized Goodman in return." There's a modifier problem (it was Goodman who did the flattering, but the sentence isn't written that way); "flattering ignorance" is an odd use of words even though it is the wording used in the source, and "posing" doesn't feel like the right word here ("positioning" might work). A. Parrot (talk) 03:19, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
 * re: radical prognostications –, yes, exactly, these were WWII-era radicals who predicted that there would be a permanent war economy and cold war (term) (different from the Cold War proper noun) that was similar in concept to the "organized system". By the subject matter's nature somewhere between sociology and criticism, I'm summarizing a lot of nebulous information while trying to preserve its poetic presentation, but happy to remove sentence detail if it would make the central concept breathe better. In this case, the term's history is technically extraneous and would only matter to a general reader in explaining the background for jargon used in the book's title. I'll footnote it.
 * I tweaked one word in the note, but it looks good now. A. Parrot (talk) 07:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * re: "Dutch uncle", is this an awkward passage? The surrounding sentences give context for what the term might mean and it's linked as the subject of its own article, so I thought that would be sufficient context.
 * Part of the problem is that I'm not sure why it's necessary to include this unusual term. If it's Stoehr's wording, it should be attributed to him. A. Parrot (talk) 07:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * , it's a term commonly used (per Google Books) for his relation with the 1960s student movements so attributing it makes it sound like Stoehr's opinion. (Goodman also used the term for himself, but that would be trivia here—the point is that other people described his nature as more critical of the youth than "avuncular" would imply alone.) I've removed the ersatz quotes around the term, since it is common enough to be in the dictionary and recast to give more context clues. czar  14:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * re: media portrayals, instead of cutting this detail, I decided to expand it to be interesting and relevant
 * I don't think it's so foreign to say that someone flattered someone else's ignorance/inexperience, so perhaps it's a cultural or regional difference? "Posing" and "presenting" would be synonyms here too but I've rephrased if it helps.
 * I think this passage works now. A. Parrot (talk) 07:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Appreciate your attention to these details, czar  06:55, 10 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Support. A. Parrot (talk) 14:22, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Coordinator note
This has been open for more than three weeks and has yet to pick up a support. Unless it attracts considerable movement towards a consensus to promote over the next three or four days I am afraid that it will have to be archived. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gog the Mild (talk • contribs) 15:12, 25 September 2022 UTC (UTC)


 * Five weeks now. Per the entirely reasonable request backed by the reviewer comments I have reverted my close. But can we see some prompt movement please? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:16, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Support by Lee Vilenski
I'll begin a review of this article very soon! My reviews tend to focus on prose and MOS issues, especially on the lede, but I will also comment on anything that could be improved. I'll post up some comments below over the next couple days, which you should either respond to, or ask me questions on issues you are unsure of. I'll be claiming points towards the wikicup once this review is over.


 * Lede
 * I feel like the lede paragraph, (if not the first sentence) should include the publisher.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Why? It's in the second paragraph, in context of its publication history, which I think is appropriate and proportionate to its relevance. czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * youth gangs pipes to gang, so can probably just relink.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Given the significant difference in meaning between the two, I think youth gangs is worth the extra characters. He was commissioned to write about youth, not about gangs. czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I was thinking "youth gangs".  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:00, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, in that case, I think the guideline on redirects that are not broken would apply czar  13:15, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Originally offered an advance - "advance" has a lot of meanings, we should probably reword to clarify this is a financial advance.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Linked czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Goodman had a contract the next day - probably should say that Random House provided a contract.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The same sentence already says the publisher, Epstein, was from Random House, unless there is something else that needs specification here? czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Same as gang for college campus.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Same as above czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * But Goodman's fame faded as quickly as it came. In later years, reviewers reproached Goodman's exclusion of women from his analysis. Many specifics of the book became dated with time. New York Review Books reissued Growing Up Absurd in 2012. - this is a weird series of small sentences that just say things but don't really tie them together.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Recast czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Prose
 * Since advertising spurred artificial demand for useless goods,[8] corporate jobs had become abundant but were unfulfilling, without a sense of purpose or service,[5][9] and climbing to corporate power through routine, bureaucratic jobs was contrary to the ideals of purposeful vocation - this is quite the sentence.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Recast czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That whole paragraph struggles saying things almost in Wikipedia's voice such as "Worse, this mechanical state of affairs was widely accepted as inescapable or the natural conditions of work", with ties such as "he writes". I feel like it could be better written to outline this paragraph is directly about what Goodman believed before making the book.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Recast (see reply to A. Parrot above); I think this puts too little faith in the reader and makes for a drier prose style but edited nonetheless czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Aside from mentioning it was reprinted in 2012, there is just one mention of any information post 1980.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Most of the post-1980 commentary is in the Legacy rather than the Reception czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Additional comments

Additionally, if you liked this review, or are looking for items to review, I have some at my nominations list.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:53, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * - Want to make sure you've seen these. This one's still in danger of being archived. Hog Farm Talk 00:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review, ! I've recast much of the discussed points, with replies above. czar  08:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, this FAC is open for a few extra days—would you be able to take a second look? czar  22:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Noting here that Lee has moved to support czar  06:57, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Driveby comment
The link brotherhood of man probably does not go to where it's intended. Esculenta (talk) 16:12, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Good catch! Thanks, @Esculenta. czar  17:21, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Driveby comment x2
If the book had its widest readership among Germans it seems to me that some more content on reception specifically in Germany should be covered to be comprehensive. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  08:06, 14 October 2022 (UTC)


 * @Buidhe, it had its widest readership in the U.S. in the 1960s, when it was a bestseller. The paragraph covers how both the book and the author quickly fell out of favor in the 1970s such that by the 1980s, it was not in wide circulation. That the West German Greens (a much smaller readership) might have had interest in the 1980s is covered as an aside, proportionate to the weight of the claim. I personally haven't seen any extended commentary on Aufwachsen im Widerspruch with the Grüne besides Stoehr's comment. czar  10:45, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Did you look at German-language sources? (t &#183; c)  buidhe  16:44, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Yep but didn't find any particular extended commentary on the Greens and Goodman. If you have access to German academic databases, I'd welcome the extra search power, especially if there are undigitized book chapters from the 90s that have not made it into my federated searches. Otherwise all signs point to this being a minor point, if it was even worth mentioning in the article at all. Re-reading Stoehr's single-sentence quote, I'm inclined to remove it altogether: (published U.S. Fall 1990) It's vague and not necessarily specific to this one book.  czar  05:38, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Source review
Footnote numbers refer to this version. That's everything I can spot. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:41, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You're inconsistent on the use of publisher locations for the book citations.
 * FN 45 has no publisher.


 * Thanks @Mike Christie. Ah, I had missed the direct book citations. Does that fix it? Also what's the latest on book publisher locations—are they still worth including or should I just strike them from the citations? I figure that IBSNs are way more useful for purposes of looking up the citation. czar  17:58, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Pass. That looks good.  Re locations: the requirement at FAC is consistency, so you can include them or remove them as you see fit.  I like to include them but I think it's really just because I'm used to seeing citations formatted that way. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 18:05, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Comments by Ian
Well as coord I chucked this in the FAC Urgents list and nobody bit so I decided to put my money where my mouth is, recuse coord duties, and review myself. Although I have some interest in modern American political history, I don't know this book so approached it with a completely open mind. The article seems succinct but comprehensive to me and, following my habitual copyedit, I'm okay with the prose but let me know if I've misinterpreted anything... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:22, 31 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Looks good. Appreciate it, @Ian Rose! One question: I had reintroduced "Literary critic Adam Kirsch/Kingsley Widmer" between Reception paragraphs so that a general reader would not be confused ("Who was Widmer again?") so I considered those re-introductions the type of redundancy that would be helpful. Do you disagree? czar  12:56, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Czar, I think given the article is not too long it's not really necessary so I treated as I would duplicate links. That said I don't have a strong objection -- perhaps reduce to "Critic Adam Kirsch/Kingsley Widmer" in the latter cases? Thanks also for picking up my error with West Side Story, I should've taken greater note of the release date and realised what you meant... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:06, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * In any case if that's all we needed to discuss, and taking the source and image reviews as read, happy to support. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:06, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi I know this is one of the older nominations now—anything else left to do here? czar 01:18, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Gog the Mild (talk) 20:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)