Isolation at the Heart of Busy Occasions

Paul Goodman now has 21 books in print and we can expect two more within the year. These 21 are variously short stories, dramas, poetry, literary and social criticism, works on psychotherapy, community planning, and education. Five Years, which is neither a diary nor a journal, but a collection of “thoughts,” not only touches on all these interests but adds linguistic analysis, travels in Europe, and in a more personal vein problems of home and friends and of the streets of various cities, seen frequently under the difficult light of looking for love.

The book is remarkable for the quality and range of its thought, and for the life-experience it records. Its subtitle, thoughts during a useless time, refers to the years...