MAKING DO

Paul Goodman is an honest man, and a fairly good novelist here, and the strongest quality of Making Do is an anarchic frankness that raises him above the amply beat writers and semi-professional pagans, and a willingness to accept problems of city life on an intellectual as well as erotic level. The main character is a bisexual, tired, brilliant, rather heroic anti-hero, most of whose actions tear sown his manhood while making him a better man. The nameless narrator does many of the things Goodman is famous for: he participates in college conferences on how to better the country; has a monthly WBAI-type radio program; wants to ban private ars in Manhattan; gets involved in peace demonstrations; hates cops; associates with juvenile Porto Ricans, addicts, pushers, pregnant teen-age chicks, and talks like a low-life Plato while berating city officials and the middle classes. The story, briefly, concerns his bisexual friendship with a twenty year old college trop-out who is a borderline schizo. The schizo attempts to build a ""community"" of young anarchists but this personal community explodes when its teen-age members blow it up with murder, drugs and theft.... Paul Goodman always gets attention, good and bad, and this too will have a mixed reception.