A Ceremonial, Stories, 1936-1940

These twenty-four stories some traditional and realistic, others experimental and "cubist" were written when Goodman was in his late twenties, a student at the University of Chicago living the life of a romantic artist-outsider. They reveal a rebel at odds with American institutions yet also homesick for his native New York, the pleasures of family, and the comforts of a strong moral order. When the title story was published in the New Directions annual, Klaus Mann commented that "the tone of this young American voice reminds me of certain venerable accents long-known and ever-loved the accents of Goethe's mellow wisdom," which is the wisdom of a youth capable of seeing himself from an adult's perspective.