Paul Goodman
American writer and social critic, author of Growing Up Absurd (1960) and a fellow contributor to Dissent. Goodman called Mailer a "chump" for the qualified support he gave President Kennedy in "A Program for the Nation" (60.1), provoking a searing reply from Mailer to the Dissent editors.
Goodman and Mailer were among the writers gathered around Dissent at the turn of the 1960s. After Mailer’s 1960 symposium contribution 60.1 gave qualified backing to Kennedy, Goodman publicly derided him as a “chump,” and Mailer answered with a sharp letter to the editors.