The Empire City: A Novel of New York City

In a comic-picaresque epic that is one part Cervantes and two parts Brecht, Paul Goodman gives us the coming-of-age of Horatio, a sane man in an absurd world. Our endearingly optimistic hero resists his compulsory mis-education, does battle with the System, and scours post World War II Manhattan for an elective family of fellow-thinkers and, more important, fellow-feelers. It's a big book, but Horatio's is a big world, and his question the biggest a man can ask: "How does one live the right life?"

As Goodman once told Studs Terkel, "I might seem to have a number of divergent interests community planning, psychotherapy, education, politics but they are all one concern: how to make it possible to grow up as a human being into a culture without losing nature. I simply refuse to acknowledge that a sensible and honorable community does not exist."