Parents' Day (novel)

In Parents' Day, an unnamed male in his thirties begins teaching at a private school early in World War II. He is a single parent, having split with his wife.[1] Early in the novel, the narrator announces his homosexuality and love for the 17-year-old Davy Drood.[2] The narrator augurs that he will be fired for having a sexual relationship with a student,[3] whereas heterosexual relationships with students were tolerated.[4] When Davy seeks to have sex with a female student, the narrator tells the headmaster that they should provide contraceptives and facilitate an occasion for the pair. He questions whether he should tell Davy's mother on Parents' Day about his sexual attraction to Davy. The narrator has sex with a woman while thinking of Davy. He reveals that he had manually stimulated Davy through the blankets and the narrator ejaculated in his pants. Jeff Deegan, a student with a crush on the narrator, fights Davy on Parents' Day. In a jealous betrayal by Jeff, the narrator is fired from the school. The narrator's poems intersperse the text.[5]

Parents' Day is autobiographical fiction in which the author, Paul Goodman, explores and exaggerates his experience teaching at the upstate New York progressive boarding school Manumit, where he taught during the 1943 school year until his firing for reasons related to his homosexual activity.[6]

Goodman, in an effort to change his character and find his life's purpose, underwent a self-psychoanalysis beginning in 1946.[7] From a disciple of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, Goodman learned Reichian techniques, which he performed as a set of unsequenced exercises rather than an ordered program.[8] After half a year with this disciple and half a year of Goodman's own free association, dream analysis, and other exercises, Goodman's self-analysis extended into an autobiographical novel based on the experiences at a progressive boarding school that led to his firing.[9] This writing exercise, which attempts to understand—rather than justify—his behavior,[6] gradually replaced his Reichian practice and exemplified how Goodman returned to his artistic practice to better understand his own life. Goodman's result, written from first-person perspective, was only barely concealed as fiction.[10]

His book was originally titled The Fire, in reference to the central plot element and based on the real fire incident at Manumit during Goodman's 1943–1944 teaching year. It was later retitled. Goodman prepared a preface for the book that was cut prior to publication. Goodman's brother, Percival, illustrated the book.[11] While Goodman finished the manuscript in 1959, he struggled to find a publisher[1] based on the book's content.[12]

The 5x8 Press of Saugatuck, Connecticut, published Parents' Day in 1951.[13] Goodman's friend, Mortimer "Tony" Gran, who previously published Goodman's poetry, offered to print a book for Goodman in-between other printing jobs. Only 500 copies of the 1,400 printed copies were bound.[14] Most of these 500 copies went unsold[15] and the unbounded remainders were discarded.[16] Black Sparrow Press of Santa Barbara reprinted Parents Day in 1985[17] with an afterword from Goodman's literary executor Taylor Stoehr and new illustrations from Goodman's brother.[18]

An Iowa Journal of Literary Studies review saw Parents' Day as an honest view into Goodman's faults as a developing educator.[12] A 2016 reader's guide to gay American novels called the novel a "personal apologia masquerading as fiction".[5] In the academic Donald Morton's analysis, the narrator's early conclusion that his homosexuality would prove impossible to reconcile with the school's community is an admission of the narrator's desires as "unrealistic" or "pathetic".[4] The Iowa Journal review describes Goodman as "introspective" and "non-judgmental" in acknowledging his unresolved unease in how he had acted on sincere desire but had hurt others in the process, and in how he would likely act the same under similar circumstances, following his impulse and suffering the consequences.[12]

The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies appreciated the book's humor, such as how the author's serious, existential, questioning tone juxtaposes with his enthusiasm for sex, often exacerbating the former.[12] A 2016 reader's guide to gay American novels wrote that its parts do not cohere into a whole.[5]

While Goodman later became known as an educator, his belief in the educator's role in their students' sexual development contributed to his ill repute during the 1940s and 1950s.[6] Though the book sold poorly, Goodman's literary executor Taylor Stoehr wrote that the book became a gay underground classic with influence that outpaced its circulation.[15] Goodman referred to Parents' Day, alongside Making Do and The Break-up of Our Camp, as his three "community novels".[19]

• Full text at the Internet Archive