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Truth Imagined

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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.

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.

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.

This book was published many years after "The True Believer," and one gets the impression that the executrix of his estate (to whom the book is copyrighted) put together what she thought were Hoffer's best essays. Since he lived to be 81 years old and wrote a bit every single day, it is very possible that had he sat down to write an autobiographical piece that it might have looked very different from what was included in this book-- including being much longer than this 95 page book or chosing completely different vignettes from his life to illustrate what he thought to be germane examples.

A lot of things were explained in this book that were not clear up until now. For example: One of the most vivid images was the opening quote of (my edition of) "The True Believer." "And slime they had for mortar," referenced the construction of a temple in the Bible. It seems that misfits of society (which Hoffer considered himself to be) can be something very useful in the building of something great. *They* are the slime holding together/ completing the bricks of something great. The vignette of which Hoffer was speaking was one in which a bunch of random day laborers came together to build a road. There *really was* enough knowledge dispered among these men to do something good in one instance, and in that case there could be large amounts of different knowledge available under similar circumstances.)

Hoffer explains the periods of very long stasis-- particularly of China and Japan-- as attributable to lack of inventive capacity. Things like this would be inappropriate to say these days (because "all cultures are equally relevant and useful"), but Hoffer saw the root of the problem and summed it up with simple aphorisms.

Another interesting fact in the book was the observation that by being a drifter, one can encounter many different types of personality and that some of them are actually very intelligent. (Hoffer himself was obviously very intelligent, but he also characterized very intelligent people.) Countries like Australia and the United States (among others) were formed by people who didn't fit very well into their own societies, and they drifted to another society and found something great. Drifting is not necessarily equal to stupidity/ incompetence-- although it can be associated with people who are in some place because of some addiction to some thing (drugs, women, different scenery) that keeps them "in the life."

Certain facets of Jewish culture are dissected. For example, he notes that they prefer to live in the here-and-now rather than sing about the happy times that will follow in the second life. Because of their preoccupation with *this* world, they have been disproportionately represented in influencing Western society.

Hoffer does have a bit of an ego (and he has an intellect worth a bit of pride), but that does not overpower the book.

One good point about this book is that this gem can be read through in about 2.5 hours, and it was definitely some of the best time that I have ever spent reading a books. Reading something by Ayn Rand is something that takes a *very long* investment of time-- and even in her 1,000+ page tomes, she doesn't really say much more than Hoffer does in his books that are 1/10th of the length.

As far as the *type* of reasoning goes, it is very empirical. His conclusions are arrived at not by use of fancy words and syllogisms, but by actually referencing real life situations and coming up with rules only as a result of extant situations and real experience.

Well worth the purchase price.

Revisiting the curriculum that graduated me brought me to Hoffer's "True Believer," a work I was assigned in an American Literature class years ago. As a possible way of understanding the author, I read what was a meager autobiography in "Truth Imagined" and tried unsuccessfully to find corraboration for the few facts presented on his early life. The end papers, essays and book jackets I found all gave the same information--that he was blinded in a fall in his early life; lost his mother two years later due to effects of the tumble down a flight of stairs they took together; that the Carpenters' Union paid for his father's funeral; that Hoffer regained his sight, read voraciously and worked fields and docks in California; and wrote a classic work on the mentality and motivation of the leaders and followers of mass movements. All that is known of this brilliant man is what he wanted us to know and I found myself at the end of the reading, asking, "Is that all?" Hoffer is a clear writer, no flourishes, just the facts presented with logic. At first I thought, what a life! Then it occurred to me that I knew no more than when I began reading. As a family researcher with over 50 years experience, I thought I'd be able to find the man. No such luck. Who was he? Who were his family? Everyone has a history it seems, except the man who knew history well. With no luck in locating him in censuses or vital records I went to the website for the college which holds his papers. The most poignant and maybe truthful addenda to Hoffer's life are the few items the man who lived in small rooms his entire adult life left behind--library cards, buttons, keys, a prayer shawl. Oh the things untold revealed in those belongings!