Blind as a child, Eric Hoffer--one of America's most important thinkers--regained his sight at the age of fifteen and became a voracious reader. At eighteen, fate would take his remaining family, sending him on the road with three hundred dollars and into the life of a Depression Era migrant worker, but his appetite for knowledge--history, science, mankind--remained and became the basis for his insights on human nature. Filled with timeless aphorisms and entertaining stories, Truth Imagined tracks Hoffer's years on the road, which served as the breeding ground for his most fertile thoughts.
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Eric Hoffer--philosopher, author of the timeless tome The True Believer, and a truly great American thinker--leaves us with his memoir. It's an insightful, stunning, and entertaining depiction of his life on the road during The Great Depression of the early 1900's.
From the Author
If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.
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Eric Hoffer Biography
Former migratory worker and longshoreman, Eric Hoffer burst on the scene in 1951 with his irreplaceable tome, The True Believer, and assured his place among the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. Nine books later, Hoffer remains a vital figure with his cogent insights to the nature of mass movements and the essence of humankind.
Of his early life, Hoffer has written: "I had no schooling. I was practically blind up to the age of fifteen. When my eyesight came back, I was seized with an enormous hunger for the printed word. I read indiscriminately everything within reach--English and German.
"When my father (a cabinetmaker) died, I realized that I would have to fend for myself. I knew several things: One, that I didn't want to work in a factory; two, that I couldn't stand being dependent on the good graces of a boss; three, that I was going to stay poor; four, that I had to get out of New York. Logic told me that California was the poor man's country."
Through ten years as a migratory worker and as a gold-miner around Nevada City, Hoffer labored hard but continued to read and write during the years of the Great Depression. The Okies and the Arkies were the "new pioneers," and Hoffer was one of them. He had library cards in a dozen towns along the railroad, and when he could afford it, he took a room near a library for concentrated thinking and writing.
In 1943, Hoffer chose the longshoreman's life and settled in California. Eventually, he worked three days each week and spent one day as "research professor" at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1964, he was the subject of twelve half-hour programs on national television. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.
"America meant freedom and what is freedom? To Hoffer it is the capacity to feel like oneself. He felt like Eric Hoffer; sometimes like Eric Hoffer, working man. It could be said, I believe, that he as the first important American writer, working class born, who remained working class-in his habits, associations, environment. I cannot think of another. Therefore, he was a national resource. The only one of its kind in the nation's possession." - Eric Sevareid, from his dedication speech to Eric Hoffer, San Francisco, CA, September 17, 1985
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40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The growing years of a remarkable "thinker" for our times,
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This review is from: Truth Imagined (Paperback)
Anything and everything by Eric Hoffer is always fascinating; this story of his life, and his responses to dozens of people he met, is no exception. This is book is an adventure, his life as a bum and the experiences until 1942 which shaped his personal outlook and created his rugged individualist philosophy of life. His first book was the classic 'True Believer' in 1951, significant enough to help shape the ideas of President John F. Kennedy. Hoffer is deservedly famous for it and 10 other such books. This one should be read in connection with any of them. Originally published in 1983, near the end of his life, it covers his career up to the start of his career as a longshoreman/intellectual in San Francisco. One element dominates, his insatiable curiosity and interest in other people. For that reason, he would undoubtedly object to be called an "intellectual". Yet, the term fits; this book appeals to the intellect, and he was an intelligent and informed person. The difference is how he related to people and ideas; many modern intellectuals relate only to books, documents and other abstractions. When Hoffer read Michael de Montaigne he "felt all the time he was writing about me" because he had learned the same sort of common sense and practical wisdom from the bums, hobos, homeless and other drifters who were always a part of his life. As Casey Stengel once said, "You can learn a lot by listening". The five paragraphs of his 23rd Chapter are a gem for every historian, fully equal in common sense and beauty to the Biblical 23rd Psalm. Skip the first paragraph if you want; the other four explain history and Hoffer better than anything else I've read. "History is made not by irresistible forces but by example," sums up Hoffer's style; an aphorism in the style of Montaigne, with the power of dynamite. Like dynamite, history is deadly if the anecdote is wrong, and such errors are easy to make; but, in the hands of a good historian, it shows how everyday events are illuminated by history. His 24th Chapter explains far more of modern economics than anything from Adam Smith to Alan Greenspan; had either economist learned to sum up Western Civ more astutely, the world would be far more peaceful, benign and just. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, with only $50 in hand, Hoffer learned a society without money means "there is no freedom of choice, since it is ruled by sheer power, and no equality, since brute force cannot be distributed." These two chapters, 11 short paragraphs in all illustrated by two clarion anecdotes, are worth the price of the book. The rest is interesting in explaining how he reached these two ideas and became one of the most significant intellectuals -- he'd prefer "thinker" -- who is more relevant today than ever before.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insights into the life of Hoffer,
By liverleef (louisville, Ky United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Truth Imagined (Paperback)
I first read The True Believer over a year ago. No other book has made more of an impression on me. The insights into human nature it contains never cease to amaze me. I refer to it often and I never fail to be amazed at how current events prove Hoffers assertion correct over and over.
I was rather surprised when I read this autobiography of hoffer. I was surprised at how small the book was and slightly surprised at how little he discussed writing The True Believer. The book describes Hoffers life as a transient and the many characters he met and worked with during this time. There are enough entertaining stories in the book to keep any reader engaged, even if youve never read any of Hoffers books. Reading the book really gives you an idea of just how intelligent Hoffer was. Hoffer was knowledgable on a wide range of subjects, from Chemistry and Philosphy to advanced Mathmatics and all sorts of sciences.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating and inspiring in some ways, but also rather sad,
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This review is from: Truth Imagined (Paperback)
This short autobiographical memoir can be read in one sitting and, for me, the experience was much like watching a movie: fascinating episodic stories, manifestations of the man's character, occasional profound observations regarding the ways of the world, but always an incomplete outsider's perspective preventing us from really getting inside and grasping what made the man tick. Yet even with this limitation, we witness an interesting case study of how a person's life can unfold when restless rootlessness is combined with an innate passion to learn and understand and become something worthwhile.
To very briefly sketch his story, Eric Hoffer lost his mother and vision while a young child, regained his vision as a teenager, lost his father not much later, and spent the remaining decades of his life as a migrant worker and longshoreman, all the while reading voraciously in various fields (math, science, history, classic novels, Montaigne, etc.) but never receiving formal education. He almost committed suicide at one point, but aborted the attempt just in time. He never married or had children, and he fell in love once, but his insecurity and his inability to put down roots compelled him to abandon that relationship, a decision which he always regretted and which permanently wounded his heart and spirit. All of this culminated in his writing several books, including his classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.), which established him as a thinker worth taking seriously. The positive aspect of Hoffer's story is that his unusual background, tied mostly to manual labor and the underclass rather than ivory towers and polite society, enabled him to come up with a variety of original psychological and sociological insights which we're still mining even today. This accomplishment is inspiring for anyone who strives to be self-educated - or, more precisely, educated in a self-directed manner drawing on both books written by others and one's personal experiences. But the negative and sad aspect is that he ultimately didn't look back on his life as a happy one. What he achieved came at the expense of not having truly meaningful and lasting human relationships, and he felt himself to be a tourist in this world rather than someone who really belonged here. He reveled in his physical and mental powers, but he also perpetually struggled with feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. A part of him wanted to be remembered and respected, but he couldn't really enjoy his accomplishments because his underclass background made him reflexively dismiss such feelings as vain and pretentious. And I was also surprised to see that Hoffer had essentially no interest in spiritual matters, which suggests that his curiosity was intense but also quite bounded; for example, in discussing the Old Testament, he expresses fascination with the richness of the lives which are depicted, but he entirely ignores its metaphysical dimensions! Many people have put Hoffer on a pedestal, perhaps even as a model to emulate in some ways, but I can't help but wonder what more he might have accomplished and how much happier he might have been if his life hadn't been deprived in so many ways. If you're intrigued enough to read this book, I recommend reading it to see examples of not only the potentials but also the perils of living an atypical and fairly narrow life.
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