Making Do

Most of the story is set in Vanderzee, New Jersey, a fictionalized Hoboken, where the main characters live after being priced out of and disenchanted with New York City. The novel vascillates between first- and third-person narration. The unnamed narrator meets a college student, Terry, at an Ohio State University panel discussion and falls in love. Their relationship is sexual but they're rarely presented together and some details are presented indirectly, such Terry's drug-induced schizophrenia. Another character, Harold, is impotent and longs for one woman but spends time with teenage Puerto Rican hustlers in New York's Union Square who spend his money. One is tricked into betraying Harold.{{sfn|Gunn|2016|p=80}}

The novel is self-referential, as Terry is narrated to have learned about "community" from "Goodman, the anarchist writer, whom he had newly added to the pantheon alongside Nathanael West and Mailer" and another character criticizes Goodman.{{sfn|Gunn|2016|p=80}}

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".{{sfn|Roszak|1969|p=178}} 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.{{sfn|Roszak|1969|pp=178–179}}

File:Paul Goodman, 1964.jpg

The Macmillan Company first printed Making Do in November 1963. A paperback edition followed in October 1964 with New American Library's Signet imprint.{{sfn|Nicely|1979|p=91}} The book incorporated previous works by Goodman, such as his 1961 proposal for banning cars from Manhattan{{sfn|Nicely|1979|p=77}} and two short stories: "Eagle's Bridge: The Death of a Dog" (1962){{sfn|Nicely|1979|p=81}} and "At the Lawyer's" (1963).{{sfn|Nicely|1979|p=89}}

Goodman referred to Making Do, along with Parents' Day and The Break-Up of Our Camp as his three "community novels".{{sfn|Nicely|1979|p=3}} The work is a roman à clef:{{sfn|Stoehr|1994|p=308}} autobiographical fiction with its central character as a middle-aged social critic, i.e., Goodman.{{sfn|Roszak|1969|p=179}}

Goodman's novels and poetry often featured gay subject matter.{{sfn|Gunn|2016|p=80}}

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.{{sfn|Roszak|1969|p=179}}

Goodman's fictional works received little critical recognition, according to a bibliographer of his works.{{sfn|Nicely|1979|p=3}}

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".{{sfn|Finn|1963}}

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{Cite news |last1=Finn |first1=James |title=A Utopian Narrator Gets Out of Hand (Rev. of Making Do) |work=The New York Times Book Review |page=22 |date=1963-12-15 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1963/12/15/archives/a-utopian-narrator-gets-out-of-hand.html |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite book |last1=Fried |first1=Lewis |chapter=Paul Goodman: The City as Self |title=Makers of the City |date=1990 |language=English |isbn=978-0-87023-693-8 |publisher=University of Massachusetts Press |location=Amherst |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/makersofcity0000frie/page/159/mode/1up |pages=159–206 }}
• {{Cite book |last1=Gunn |first1=Drewey Wayne |chapter=Paul Goodman: Parents' Day, 1951; Making Do, 1963 |title=Gay American Novels, 1870–1970: A Reader's Guide |pages=79–80 |date=2016 |language=en |isbn=978-1-4766-2522-5 |publisher=McFarland |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BqOECwAAQBAJ&pg=PA53 |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite magazine |last1=Malcolm |first1=Donald |title=Books: Five-Thumb Exercise |magazine=The New Yorker |volume=40 |pages=238, 241, 244–245 |date=1964-11-28 |url=http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1964-11-28#folio=238 |issn=0028-792X |id={{EBSCOhost|23160032}} }}
• {{Cite journal |last1=Mudrick |first1=Marvin |author-link=Marvin Mudrick |title=Man Alive |journal=The Hudson Review |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=110–123 |date=Spring 1964 |doi=10.2307/3848254 |issn=0018-702X |jstor=3848254 |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite book |last1=Nicely |first1=Tom |section=Making Do |page=91 |title=Adam and His Work: A Bibliography of Sources by and about Paul Goodman (1911–1972) |year=1979 |isbn=978-0-8108-1219-2 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |url=https://archive.org/details/adamhisworkbibli0000nice |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/adamhisworkbibli0000nice/page/91/mode/1up }}
• {{Cite magazine |last1=Pickrel |first1=Paul |title=Rev. of Making Do |magazine=Harper's Magazine |volume=227 |page=128 |date=November 1963 |issn=0017-789X |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite news |last1=Poirier |first1=Richard |author-link=Richard Poirier |title=Cutting a Figure in Sack Cloth (Rev. of Making Do) |work=Book Week |pages=6 |date=1963-12-15 |issn=0524-059X |oclc=01536776 |df=mdy-all |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-cutting-a-fig/141076475/ }}
• {{Cite news |last1=Rexroth |first1=Kenneth |author-link=Kenneth Rexroth |title=Our Anti-Life Bohemians |work=Book Week |pages=2, 19 |date=1964-02-16 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-our-anti-life/141078122/ |location=San Francisco, California |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite journal |last1=Roszak |first1=Theodore |author-link=Theodore Roszak (scholar) |title=The Future as Community |journal=Nation |volume=206 |issue=16 |pages=497–503 |date=1968-04-15 |issn=0027-8378 |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite book |last1=Roszak |first1=Theodore |author-link=Theodore Roszak (scholar) |author-mask=1 |chapter=Exploring Utopia: The Visionary Sociology of Paul Goodman |title=The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition |pages=178–204 |date=1969 |language=en |publisher=Doubleday |location=Garden City, New York |oclc=23039 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/themakingofacult0000unse/page/178/mode/2up }}
• {{Cite news |last1=Schott |first1=Webster |title=Literature Enters New Phase with Liberty of Expression |work=The Kansas City Times |page=26 |date=1964-01-14 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kansas-city-times-literature-enters/141080980/ |location=Kansas City, Missouri |df=mdy-all }}
• {{Cite book |last1=Stoehr |first1=Taylor |year=1994 |author-link=Taylor Stoehr |title=Here Now Next: Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy |isbn=978-0-7879-0005-2 |publisher=Jossey-Bass |url=https://archive.org/details/herenownextpaulg0000stoe }}
• {{Cite book |last1=Sulkes |first1=Stan |chapter=Paul Goodman |title=Critical Survey of Long Fiction |pages=1892–1900 |date=2010 |isbn=978-1-58765-535-7 |edition=4th |publisher=Salem Press |df=mdy-all }}

{{refend}}

• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000221771 Full text (public domain)] from HathiTrust
• {{Internet Archive|makingdo00goodrich|Full text}}

{{Paul Goodman}}

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