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Tom Schachtman of Salisbury Takes on an American Icon
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Eric Hoffer was concerned with being a modern man. Possibly born in 1898, he listed his birth year as 1902. This may have served to delay the mandatory retirement age decreed by the longshoremen’s union, but may also have been grounded in a more subtle, but equally important, consideration for the social philosopher: Hoffer, who died in 1983, wanted to be seen as a man of the 20th century.
Hoffer, who wrote 10 books analyzing the human condition and who was lionized by intellectuals in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, has become the latest subject for the pen of prolific Salisbury author and historian, Tom Shachtman, whose book, “American Iconoclast, The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer,” is to be released next week by Hopewell Publications. Mr. Shachtman sees Hoffer’s message as being as relevant today as it was during the aftermath of World War II and during the rise of Communism.
“His books have all been reprinted since 9/11 and are extremely relevant,” said the author, referring to Hoffer’s contemplation of such issues as fanaticism and mass movements, “In his books, he is trying to figure out, ‘Who are these guys [fanatics]?’ I think his books deserve wider readership. This is interesting, deep stuff.”
He said some readers may bypass Hoffer’s writings because they “seem too anchored to a period,” but adds, “His aphorisms are timeless. I read ‘A Passionate State of Mind’ when I was in grad school and it is just as good today.”
Indeed, Hoffer’s writing seems particularly germane today, as American society splinters into factions, each ardently adhering to its own vision, and as foreign foes clamor for martyrdom in an effort to harm this nation. Consider these two quotes from “A Passionate State of Mind.”
“A nation is ‘tired’ when it ceases to want things fervently. It makes no difference whether this blunting of desire is due to satiety, reasonableness or disillusion. To a tired nation the future seems barren, offering nothing which would surpass that which is or has been. The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.”
And:
“Give people pride and they’ll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgment, our moral and esthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering, we search for martyrdom as hidden treasure.”
Mr. Shachtman likens Hoffer’s writings to “dropping a pebble into a quiet pond.”
“You pick up on the ripples,” he said. “He offers us insights to start our own thought processes, with a quality not present in most writing today.” Continued...
Hoffer, who wrote 10 books analyzing the human condition and who was lionized by intellectuals in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, has become the latest subject for the pen of prolific Salisbury author and historian, Tom Shachtman, whose book, “American Iconoclast, The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer,” is to be released next week by Hopewell Publications. Mr. Shachtman sees Hoffer’s message as being as relevant today as it was during the aftermath of World War II and during the rise of Communism.
“His books have all been reprinted since 9/11 and are extremely relevant,” said the author, referring to Hoffer’s contemplation of such issues as fanaticism and mass movements, “In his books, he is trying to figure out, ‘Who are these guys [fanatics]?’ I think his books deserve wider readership. This is interesting, deep stuff.”
He said some readers may bypass Hoffer’s writings because they “seem too anchored to a period,” but adds, “His aphorisms are timeless. I read ‘A Passionate State of Mind’ when I was in grad school and it is just as good today.”
Indeed, Hoffer’s writing seems particularly germane today, as American society splinters into factions, each ardently adhering to its own vision, and as foreign foes clamor for martyrdom in an effort to harm this nation. Consider these two quotes from “A Passionate State of Mind.”
“A nation is ‘tired’ when it ceases to want things fervently. It makes no difference whether this blunting of desire is due to satiety, reasonableness or disillusion. To a tired nation the future seems barren, offering nothing which would surpass that which is or has been. The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.”
And:
“Give people pride and they’ll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgment, our moral and esthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering, we search for martyrdom as hidden treasure.”
Mr. Shachtman likens Hoffer’s writings to “dropping a pebble into a quiet pond.”
“You pick up on the ripples,” he said. “He offers us insights to start our own thought processes, with a quality not present in most writing today.” Continued...
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Eric Hoffer was an unlikely darling for the intelligentsia. Broad, blocky, heavy-featured, he was born poor, the son of immigrant parents from Alsace, his father a book-loving cabinetmaker. The young Hoffer had a traumatic early life. Although he was precocious and could, reportedly, read in both German and English by age 5, his eyesight was damaged when his mother fell down the stairs while carrying him in her arms. Two years later, she died, apparently from injuries received in the fall, and he lost his vision entirely. He was stricken by intense headaches and a loss of short-term memory. The conditions persisted, depending on the account, for seven to nine years, before he recovered his abilities.
Details of his youthful experiences can be derived only from his own writings, which are often contradictory. Mr. Shachtman researched all available records, but, in the end, had to rely on Hoffer’s own accounts, which may or may not be true. They reveal a disturbing household where the brilliant child was dubbed an “idiot” by his father and was left unschooled. He was placed in the care of a distant female relative who let him sleep in her bed until his teens, who may have had sexual congress with him, and who departed abruptly when his sight returned.
When his vision returned at age 15, uncertain how long he would be able to see, he began to devour books at a rapid rate. His eyesight never again abandoned him but he never stopped his omnivorous reading.
More ill-luck was in the future, however. When Hoffer was 20, his father died, leaving him alone in the world. The Carpenter’s Union gave the boy $300 and Hoffer took the bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next decade on Los Angeles’ skid row, largely solitary, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd day jobs.
He gloried in the “liberation” of his poverty and rootlessness, and, when the Depression tightened its grip and day labor became more competitive, he hit the road as a migrant worker. Library books became his literary fodder and he described himself as living “between books and brothels.” Snowed in one winter in the mountains, he read the essays of Michel de Montaigne, writings that impressed him greatly.
Critic Charles A. Foster has written of Montaigne: “In their freshness of sudden discovery, these essays everywhere give the impression that they must have grown spontaneously ... surprising him quite as much as they surprise us. But the sentences are too precise, beautiful and economical ... and the way in which topic yields effortlessly to topic cannot always be accidental. Montaigne must have written at the crossroads of the conscious and the unconscious where creativity and criticism joined forces in a single effort so artfully that we cannot tell what is spontaneous from what is created consciously to seem spontaneous.”
At their best, Mr. Shachtman says, Hoffer’s essays resemble Montaigne’s in these specific ways. Hoffer asserted that he learned the value of a good sentence from Montaigne, but, Mr. Shachtman writes, “[W]hat the attentive student learns from such a master far exceeds grammar and technique.”
In the 1940s, after being rejected by the Armed Services because of a hernia, Hoffer decided to serve the war effort by becoming a longshoreman, a job he continued for the rest of his working life. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while still earning his living loading and unloading ships. He filled notebook after notebook with his thoughts, sometimes pulling a small pad from his pocket to jot down an idea that would later be refined.
Hoffer honed his ideas while walking. “He would stroll through Golden Gate Park and would formulate a question in his mind,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Then he would formulate a more precise question and he kept going over it. By the time he got back to his room, he would be bursting to write it down. He had a process of working an idea out in his mind before ever touching a writing implement.”
In clear, concise prose, he would state his premises, logically following the ideas to their conclusion. Mr. Shachtman said the “longshoreman philosopher’s” plain style was no accident. “His writing is very accessible, without the obfuscating obbligato of academic writers,” he said. Continued...
Details of his youthful experiences can be derived only from his own writings, which are often contradictory. Mr. Shachtman researched all available records, but, in the end, had to rely on Hoffer’s own accounts, which may or may not be true. They reveal a disturbing household where the brilliant child was dubbed an “idiot” by his father and was left unschooled. He was placed in the care of a distant female relative who let him sleep in her bed until his teens, who may have had sexual congress with him, and who departed abruptly when his sight returned.
When his vision returned at age 15, uncertain how long he would be able to see, he began to devour books at a rapid rate. His eyesight never again abandoned him but he never stopped his omnivorous reading.
More ill-luck was in the future, however. When Hoffer was 20, his father died, leaving him alone in the world. The Carpenter’s Union gave the boy $300 and Hoffer took the bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next decade on Los Angeles’ skid row, largely solitary, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd day jobs.
He gloried in the “liberation” of his poverty and rootlessness, and, when the Depression tightened its grip and day labor became more competitive, he hit the road as a migrant worker. Library books became his literary fodder and he described himself as living “between books and brothels.” Snowed in one winter in the mountains, he read the essays of Michel de Montaigne, writings that impressed him greatly.
Critic Charles A. Foster has written of Montaigne: “In their freshness of sudden discovery, these essays everywhere give the impression that they must have grown spontaneously ... surprising him quite as much as they surprise us. But the sentences are too precise, beautiful and economical ... and the way in which topic yields effortlessly to topic cannot always be accidental. Montaigne must have written at the crossroads of the conscious and the unconscious where creativity and criticism joined forces in a single effort so artfully that we cannot tell what is spontaneous from what is created consciously to seem spontaneous.”
At their best, Mr. Shachtman says, Hoffer’s essays resemble Montaigne’s in these specific ways. Hoffer asserted that he learned the value of a good sentence from Montaigne, but, Mr. Shachtman writes, “[W]hat the attentive student learns from such a master far exceeds grammar and technique.”
In the 1940s, after being rejected by the Armed Services because of a hernia, Hoffer decided to serve the war effort by becoming a longshoreman, a job he continued for the rest of his working life. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while still earning his living loading and unloading ships. He filled notebook after notebook with his thoughts, sometimes pulling a small pad from his pocket to jot down an idea that would later be refined.
Hoffer honed his ideas while walking. “He would stroll through Golden Gate Park and would formulate a question in his mind,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Then he would formulate a more precise question and he kept going over it. By the time he got back to his room, he would be bursting to write it down. He had a process of working an idea out in his mind before ever touching a writing implement.”
In clear, concise prose, he would state his premises, logically following the ideas to their conclusion. Mr. Shachtman said the “longshoreman philosopher’s” plain style was no accident. “His writing is very accessible, without the obfuscating obbligato of academic writers,” he said. Continued...
Hoffer’s papers, now housed by the Hoover Institution Archives at Stamford University, include 131 of his notebooks, dated from 1949 to 1977, and filled with significant information. The papers have been available for scholarly study only since 2003, and were a boon to Mr. Shachtman’s research. “This is material that hasn’t been tapped by anyone before,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Previous biographies were done without the benefit of these materials.”
The books that Hoffer produced based on these notebooks encapsulated his original thinking and his exploration of issues that shape human experience. Hoffer’s first book, “The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements,” appeared in 1951, followed by nine others, including “The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms” in 1955, “The Ordeal Of Change” in 1963, “First Things, Last Things” in 1971 and “Truth Imagined” in 1983, the year of his death.
By the end of his life, his writings had established him as an “astute social observer,” according to Mr. Shachtman, and the aging dockworker, former agricultural migrant, and never-schooled Berkeley lecturer had been profiled in New Yorker magazine and in a Life photo-essay. Widespread recognition came, however, in 1967 after two, hour-long interviews on CBS television by chief new commentator Eric Sevareid.
Sevareid had come calling that year, attempting to lure a reluctant Hoffer before the cameras, according to Mr. Shachtman, because of the writer’s “insight into the ranks of Nazism and Communism.” Hoffer had explored those insights in “The True Believer.”
“His contention was that true believers might be enemies, but that they were the same kind of people,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Before Hoffer, explanations of mass movements were based on economics, but Hoffer said, ‘No, no—it’s really about psychology.’ He was the first person to do that and I think he explained it as well as anyone could.”
The philosopher believed that mass movements could be interchangeable, with specific ideologies being less important to the true believer than the process of being part of a cause.
Hoffer also discussed change and modernization in society in “The Ordeal of Change,” a process that has only quickened in recent decades and in which he would find much to observe and think about today.
Hoffer, who Sevareid described as the only working class writer who remained in the working class, was determinedly a laborer, believing that self-esteem and self-confidence are found in the act of creation. Thus, he might sympathize with and worry about the displaced American workers of the 21st century.
“The crazy thing is the world Hoffer spoke of, where the working man was an important part, is vanishing in the United States today and causing all kinds of dislocation,” Mr. Shachtman said. “How do you take a world-wide society that existed only 80 years ago where 80 percent of people were farmers—and their families had been farmers for thousands of years—change that in a couple of generations, and expect it to be okay? We have a history as a species of making things and now most of us are involved only as part of a process. He was very concerned about this.”
Hoffer also believed that too rapid change could be disruptive to a society. That disruption could well be brewing in American society today as people deal with an economic upheaval, massive layoffs as jobs are shipped elsewhere and as America shifts away from the ethic of the working man. “Part of this has been taken out of the hands of the working people,” said Mr. Shachtman. “An auto mechanic used to be able to repair a car, but now he has to look at a problem through computer testing. And then, often, he can’t repair it, anyway, and just puts in a new part.” Continued...
The books that Hoffer produced based on these notebooks encapsulated his original thinking and his exploration of issues that shape human experience. Hoffer’s first book, “The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements,” appeared in 1951, followed by nine others, including “The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms” in 1955, “The Ordeal Of Change” in 1963, “First Things, Last Things” in 1971 and “Truth Imagined” in 1983, the year of his death.
By the end of his life, his writings had established him as an “astute social observer,” according to Mr. Shachtman, and the aging dockworker, former agricultural migrant, and never-schooled Berkeley lecturer had been profiled in New Yorker magazine and in a Life photo-essay. Widespread recognition came, however, in 1967 after two, hour-long interviews on CBS television by chief new commentator Eric Sevareid.
Sevareid had come calling that year, attempting to lure a reluctant Hoffer before the cameras, according to Mr. Shachtman, because of the writer’s “insight into the ranks of Nazism and Communism.” Hoffer had explored those insights in “The True Believer.”
“His contention was that true believers might be enemies, but that they were the same kind of people,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Before Hoffer, explanations of mass movements were based on economics, but Hoffer said, ‘No, no—it’s really about psychology.’ He was the first person to do that and I think he explained it as well as anyone could.”
The philosopher believed that mass movements could be interchangeable, with specific ideologies being less important to the true believer than the process of being part of a cause.
Hoffer also discussed change and modernization in society in “The Ordeal of Change,” a process that has only quickened in recent decades and in which he would find much to observe and think about today.
Hoffer, who Sevareid described as the only working class writer who remained in the working class, was determinedly a laborer, believing that self-esteem and self-confidence are found in the act of creation. Thus, he might sympathize with and worry about the displaced American workers of the 21st century.
“The crazy thing is the world Hoffer spoke of, where the working man was an important part, is vanishing in the United States today and causing all kinds of dislocation,” Mr. Shachtman said. “How do you take a world-wide society that existed only 80 years ago where 80 percent of people were farmers—and their families had been farmers for thousands of years—change that in a couple of generations, and expect it to be okay? We have a history as a species of making things and now most of us are involved only as part of a process. He was very concerned about this.”
Hoffer also believed that too rapid change could be disruptive to a society. That disruption could well be brewing in American society today as people deal with an economic upheaval, massive layoffs as jobs are shipped elsewhere and as America shifts away from the ethic of the working man. “Part of this has been taken out of the hands of the working people,” said Mr. Shachtman. “An auto mechanic used to be able to repair a car, but now he has to look at a problem through computer testing. And then, often, he can’t repair it, anyway, and just puts in a new part.” Continued...
The bad economic times and dislocation in American society have already given rise to one mass movement in the United States, the Tea Party, and “another incipient movement,” Occupy Wall Street, Mr. Shachtman observed. The groups, characterized by the passion of their beliefs, “are very far apart but somewhat together in their dissatisfaction,” the author said.
“There has been a big change in American society and Hoffer would be interested in it,” Mr. Shachtman concluded. “He had a wide-ranging mind that wanted to deal with big ideas.”
Mr. Shachtman will read and sign his book Nov. 5, 5 to 7 p.m., at Johnnycake Books in Salisbury, with a second discussion and signing at Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. ■
“There has been a big change in American society and Hoffer would be interested in it,” Mr. Shachtman concluded. “He had a wide-ranging mind that wanted to deal with big ideas.”
Mr. Shachtman will read and sign his book Nov. 5, 5 to 7 p.m., at Johnnycake Books in Salisbury, with a second discussion and signing at Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. ■
Eric Hoffer was concerned with being a modern man. Possibly born in 1898, he listed his birth year as 1902. This may have served to delay the mandatory retirement age decreed by the longshoremen’s union, but may also have been grounded in a more subtle, but equally important, consideration for the social philosopher: Hoffer, who died in 1983, wanted to be seen as a man of the 20th century.
Hoffer, who wrote 10 books analyzing the human condition and who was lionized by intellectuals in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, has become the latest subject for the pen of prolific Salisbury author and historian, Tom Shachtman, whose book, “American Iconoclast, The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer,” is to be released next week by Hopewell Publications. Mr. Shachtman sees Hoffer’s message as being as relevant today as it was during the aftermath of World War II and during the rise of Communism.
“His books have all been reprinted since 9/11 and are extremely relevant,” said the author, referring to Hoffer’s contemplation of such issues as fanaticism and mass movements, “In his books, he is trying to figure out, ‘Who are these guys [fanatics]?’ I think his books deserve wider readership. This is interesting, deep stuff.”
He said some readers may bypass Hoffer’s writings because they “seem too anchored to a period,” but adds, “His aphorisms are timeless. I read ‘A Passionate State of Mind’ when I was in grad school and it is just as good today.”
Indeed, Hoffer’s writing seems particularly germane today, as American society splinters into factions, each ardently adhering to its own vision, and as foreign foes clamor for martyrdom in an effort to harm this nation. Consider these two quotes from “A Passionate State of Mind.”
“A nation is ‘tired’ when it ceases to want things fervently. It makes no difference whether this blunting of desire is due to satiety, reasonableness or disillusion. To a tired nation the future seems barren, offering nothing which would surpass that which is or has been. The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.”
And:
“Give people pride and they’ll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgment, our moral and esthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering, we search for martyrdom as hidden treasure.”
Mr. Shachtman likens Hoffer’s writings to “dropping a pebble into a quiet pond.”
“You pick up on the ripples,” he said. “He offers us insights to start our own thought processes, with a quality not present in most writing today.”
Eric Hoffer was an unlikely darling for the intelligentsia. Broad, blocky, heavy-featured, he was born poor, the son of immigrant parents from Alsace, his father a book-loving cabinetmaker. The young Hoffer had a traumatic early life. Although he was precocious and could, reportedly, read in both German and English by age 5, his eyesight was damaged when his mother fell down the stairs while carrying him in her arms. Two years later, she died, apparently from injuries received in the fall, and he lost his vision entirely. He was stricken by intense headaches and a loss of short-term memory. The conditions persisted, depending on the account, for seven to nine years, before he recovered his abilities.
Details of his youthful experiences can be derived only from his own writings, which are often contradictory. Mr. Shachtman researched all available records, but, in the end, had to rely on Hoffer’s own accounts, which may or may not be true. They reveal a disturbing household where the brilliant child was dubbed an “idiot” by his father and was left unschooled. He was placed in the care of a distant female relative who let him sleep in her bed until his teens, who may have had sexual congress with him, and who departed abruptly when his sight returned.
When his vision returned at age 15, uncertain how long he would be able to see, he began to devour books at a rapid rate. His eyesight never again abandoned him but he never stopped his omnivorous reading.
More ill-luck was in the future, however. When Hoffer was 20, his father died, leaving him alone in the world. The Carpenter’s Union gave the boy $300 and Hoffer took the bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next decade on Los Angeles’ skid row, largely solitary, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd day jobs.
He gloried in the “liberation” of his poverty and rootlessness, and, when the Depression tightened its grip and day labor became more competitive, he hit the road as a migrant worker. Library books became his literary fodder and he described himself as living “between books and brothels.” Snowed in one winter in the mountains, he read the essays of Michel de Montaigne, writings that impressed him greatly.
Critic Charles A. Foster has written of Montaigne: “In their freshness of sudden discovery, these essays everywhere give the impression that they must have grown spontaneously ... surprising him quite as much as they surprise us. But the sentences are too precise, beautiful and economical ... and the way in which topic yields effortlessly to topic cannot always be accidental. Montaigne must have written at the crossroads of the conscious and the unconscious where creativity and criticism joined forces in a single effort so artfully that we cannot tell what is spontaneous from what is created consciously to seem spontaneous.”
At their best, Mr. Shachtman says, Hoffer’s essays resemble Montaigne’s in these specific ways. Hoffer asserted that he learned the value of a good sentence from Montaigne, but, Mr. Shachtman writes, “[W]hat the attentive student learns from such a master far exceeds grammar and technique.”
In the 1940s, after being rejected by the Armed Services because of a hernia, Hoffer decided to serve the war effort by becoming a longshoreman, a job he continued for the rest of his working life. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while still earning his living loading and unloading ships. He filled notebook after notebook with his thoughts, sometimes pulling a small pad from his pocket to jot down an idea that would later be refined.
Hoffer honed his ideas while walking. “He would stroll through Golden Gate Park and would formulate a question in his mind,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Then he would formulate a more precise question and he kept going over it. By the time he got back to his room, he would be bursting to write it down. He had a process of working an idea out in his mind before ever touching a writing implement.”
In clear, concise prose, he would state his premises, logically following the ideas to their conclusion. Mr. Shachtman said the “longshoreman philosopher’s” plain style was no accident. “His writing is very accessible, without the obfuscating obbligato of academic writers,” he said.
Hoffer’s papers, now housed by the Hoover Institution Archives at Stamford University, include 131 of his notebooks, dated from 1949 to 1977, and filled with significant information. The papers have been available for scholarly study only since 2003, and were a boon to Mr. Shachtman’s research. “This is material that hasn’t been tapped by anyone before,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Previous biographies were done without the benefit of these materials.”
The books that Hoffer produced based on these notebooks encapsulated his original thinking and his exploration of issues that shape human experience. Hoffer’s first book, “The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements,” appeared in 1951, followed by nine others, including “The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms” in 1955, “The Ordeal Of Change” in 1963, “First Things, Last Things” in 1971 and “Truth Imagined” in 1983, the year of his death.
By the end of his life, his writings had established him as an “astute social observer,” according to Mr. Shachtman, and the aging dockworker, former agricultural migrant, and never-schooled Berkeley lecturer had been profiled in New Yorker magazine and in a Life photo-essay. Widespread recognition came, however, in 1967 after two, hour-long interviews on CBS television by chief new commentator Eric Sevareid.
Sevareid had come calling that year, attempting to lure a reluctant Hoffer before the cameras, according to Mr. Shachtman, because of the writer’s “insight into the ranks of Nazism and Communism.” Hoffer had explored those insights in “The True Believer.”
“His contention was that true believers might be enemies, but that they were the same kind of people,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Before Hoffer, explanations of mass movements were based on economics, but Hoffer said, ‘No, no—it’s really about psychology.’ He was the first person to do that and I think he explained it as well as anyone could.”
The philosopher believed that mass movements could be interchangeable, with specific ideologies being less important to the true believer than the process of being part of a cause.
Hoffer also discussed change and modernization in society in “The Ordeal of Change,” a process that has only quickened in recent decades and in which he would find much to observe and think about today.
Hoffer, who Sevareid described as the only working class writer who remained in the working class, was determinedly a laborer, believing that self-esteem and self-confidence are found in the act of creation. Thus, he might sympathize with and worry about the displaced American workers of the 21st century.
“The crazy thing is the world Hoffer spoke of, where the working man was an important part, is vanishing in the United States today and causing all kinds of dislocation,” Mr. Shachtman said. “How do you take a world-wide society that existed only 80 years ago where 80 percent of people were farmers—and their families had been farmers for thousands of years—change that in a couple of generations, and expect it to be okay? We have a history as a species of making things and now most of us are involved only as part of a process. He was very concerned about this.”
Hoffer also believed that too rapid change could be disruptive to a society. That disruption could well be brewing in American society today as people deal with an economic upheaval, massive layoffs as jobs are shipped elsewhere and as America shifts away from the ethic of the working man. “Part of this has been taken out of the hands of the working people,” said Mr. Shachtman. “An auto mechanic used to be able to repair a car, but now he has to look at a problem through computer testing. And then, often, he can’t repair it, anyway, and just puts in a new part.”
The bad economic times and dislocation in American society have already given rise to one mass movement in the United States, the Tea Party, and “another incipient movement,” Occupy Wall Street, Mr. Shachtman observed. The groups, characterized by the passion of their beliefs, “are very far apart but somewhat together in their dissatisfaction,” the author said.
“There has been a big change in American society and Hoffer would be interested in it,” Mr. Shachtman concluded. “He had a wide-ranging mind that wanted to deal with big ideas.”
Mr. Shachtman will read and sign his book Nov. 5, 5 to 7 p.m., at Johnnycake Books in Salisbury, with a second discussion and signing at Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. ■
Hoffer, who wrote 10 books analyzing the human condition and who was lionized by intellectuals in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, has become the latest subject for the pen of prolific Salisbury author and historian, Tom Shachtman, whose book, “American Iconoclast, The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer,” is to be released next week by Hopewell Publications. Mr. Shachtman sees Hoffer’s message as being as relevant today as it was during the aftermath of World War II and during the rise of Communism.
“His books have all been reprinted since 9/11 and are extremely relevant,” said the author, referring to Hoffer’s contemplation of such issues as fanaticism and mass movements, “In his books, he is trying to figure out, ‘Who are these guys [fanatics]?’ I think his books deserve wider readership. This is interesting, deep stuff.”
He said some readers may bypass Hoffer’s writings because they “seem too anchored to a period,” but adds, “His aphorisms are timeless. I read ‘A Passionate State of Mind’ when I was in grad school and it is just as good today.”
Indeed, Hoffer’s writing seems particularly germane today, as American society splinters into factions, each ardently adhering to its own vision, and as foreign foes clamor for martyrdom in an effort to harm this nation. Consider these two quotes from “A Passionate State of Mind.”
“A nation is ‘tired’ when it ceases to want things fervently. It makes no difference whether this blunting of desire is due to satiety, reasonableness or disillusion. To a tired nation the future seems barren, offering nothing which would surpass that which is or has been. The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.”
And:
“Give people pride and they’ll live on bread and water, bless their exploiters, and even die for them. Self-surrender is a transaction of barter: we surrender our sense of human dignity, our judgment, our moral and esthetic sense for pride. If there is pride in being free we are ready to die for liberty. If there is pride to be derived from an identification with a leader, we grovel in the dust before a Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin and are ready to die for him. If there is a distinction in suffering, we search for martyrdom as hidden treasure.”
Mr. Shachtman likens Hoffer’s writings to “dropping a pebble into a quiet pond.”
“You pick up on the ripples,” he said. “He offers us insights to start our own thought processes, with a quality not present in most writing today.”
Eric Hoffer was an unlikely darling for the intelligentsia. Broad, blocky, heavy-featured, he was born poor, the son of immigrant parents from Alsace, his father a book-loving cabinetmaker. The young Hoffer had a traumatic early life. Although he was precocious and could, reportedly, read in both German and English by age 5, his eyesight was damaged when his mother fell down the stairs while carrying him in her arms. Two years later, she died, apparently from injuries received in the fall, and he lost his vision entirely. He was stricken by intense headaches and a loss of short-term memory. The conditions persisted, depending on the account, for seven to nine years, before he recovered his abilities.
Details of his youthful experiences can be derived only from his own writings, which are often contradictory. Mr. Shachtman researched all available records, but, in the end, had to rely on Hoffer’s own accounts, which may or may not be true. They reveal a disturbing household where the brilliant child was dubbed an “idiot” by his father and was left unschooled. He was placed in the care of a distant female relative who let him sleep in her bed until his teens, who may have had sexual congress with him, and who departed abruptly when his sight returned.
When his vision returned at age 15, uncertain how long he would be able to see, he began to devour books at a rapid rate. His eyesight never again abandoned him but he never stopped his omnivorous reading.
More ill-luck was in the future, however. When Hoffer was 20, his father died, leaving him alone in the world. The Carpenter’s Union gave the boy $300 and Hoffer took the bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next decade on Los Angeles’ skid row, largely solitary, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd day jobs.
He gloried in the “liberation” of his poverty and rootlessness, and, when the Depression tightened its grip and day labor became more competitive, he hit the road as a migrant worker. Library books became his literary fodder and he described himself as living “between books and brothels.” Snowed in one winter in the mountains, he read the essays of Michel de Montaigne, writings that impressed him greatly.
Critic Charles A. Foster has written of Montaigne: “In their freshness of sudden discovery, these essays everywhere give the impression that they must have grown spontaneously ... surprising him quite as much as they surprise us. But the sentences are too precise, beautiful and economical ... and the way in which topic yields effortlessly to topic cannot always be accidental. Montaigne must have written at the crossroads of the conscious and the unconscious where creativity and criticism joined forces in a single effort so artfully that we cannot tell what is spontaneous from what is created consciously to seem spontaneous.”
At their best, Mr. Shachtman says, Hoffer’s essays resemble Montaigne’s in these specific ways. Hoffer asserted that he learned the value of a good sentence from Montaigne, but, Mr. Shachtman writes, “[W]hat the attentive student learns from such a master far exceeds grammar and technique.”
In the 1940s, after being rejected by the Armed Services because of a hernia, Hoffer decided to serve the war effort by becoming a longshoreman, a job he continued for the rest of his working life. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while still earning his living loading and unloading ships. He filled notebook after notebook with his thoughts, sometimes pulling a small pad from his pocket to jot down an idea that would later be refined.
Hoffer honed his ideas while walking. “He would stroll through Golden Gate Park and would formulate a question in his mind,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Then he would formulate a more precise question and he kept going over it. By the time he got back to his room, he would be bursting to write it down. He had a process of working an idea out in his mind before ever touching a writing implement.”
In clear, concise prose, he would state his premises, logically following the ideas to their conclusion. Mr. Shachtman said the “longshoreman philosopher’s” plain style was no accident. “His writing is very accessible, without the obfuscating obbligato of academic writers,” he said.
Hoffer’s papers, now housed by the Hoover Institution Archives at Stamford University, include 131 of his notebooks, dated from 1949 to 1977, and filled with significant information. The papers have been available for scholarly study only since 2003, and were a boon to Mr. Shachtman’s research. “This is material that hasn’t been tapped by anyone before,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Previous biographies were done without the benefit of these materials.”
The books that Hoffer produced based on these notebooks encapsulated his original thinking and his exploration of issues that shape human experience. Hoffer’s first book, “The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements,” appeared in 1951, followed by nine others, including “The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms” in 1955, “The Ordeal Of Change” in 1963, “First Things, Last Things” in 1971 and “Truth Imagined” in 1983, the year of his death.
By the end of his life, his writings had established him as an “astute social observer,” according to Mr. Shachtman, and the aging dockworker, former agricultural migrant, and never-schooled Berkeley lecturer had been profiled in New Yorker magazine and in a Life photo-essay. Widespread recognition came, however, in 1967 after two, hour-long interviews on CBS television by chief new commentator Eric Sevareid.
Sevareid had come calling that year, attempting to lure a reluctant Hoffer before the cameras, according to Mr. Shachtman, because of the writer’s “insight into the ranks of Nazism and Communism.” Hoffer had explored those insights in “The True Believer.”
“His contention was that true believers might be enemies, but that they were the same kind of people,” Mr. Shachtman said. “Before Hoffer, explanations of mass movements were based on economics, but Hoffer said, ‘No, no—it’s really about psychology.’ He was the first person to do that and I think he explained it as well as anyone could.”
The philosopher believed that mass movements could be interchangeable, with specific ideologies being less important to the true believer than the process of being part of a cause.
Hoffer also discussed change and modernization in society in “The Ordeal of Change,” a process that has only quickened in recent decades and in which he would find much to observe and think about today.
Hoffer, who Sevareid described as the only working class writer who remained in the working class, was determinedly a laborer, believing that self-esteem and self-confidence are found in the act of creation. Thus, he might sympathize with and worry about the displaced American workers of the 21st century.
“The crazy thing is the world Hoffer spoke of, where the working man was an important part, is vanishing in the United States today and causing all kinds of dislocation,” Mr. Shachtman said. “How do you take a world-wide society that existed only 80 years ago where 80 percent of people were farmers—and their families had been farmers for thousands of years—change that in a couple of generations, and expect it to be okay? We have a history as a species of making things and now most of us are involved only as part of a process. He was very concerned about this.”
Hoffer also believed that too rapid change could be disruptive to a society. That disruption could well be brewing in American society today as people deal with an economic upheaval, massive layoffs as jobs are shipped elsewhere and as America shifts away from the ethic of the working man. “Part of this has been taken out of the hands of the working people,” said Mr. Shachtman. “An auto mechanic used to be able to repair a car, but now he has to look at a problem through computer testing. And then, often, he can’t repair it, anyway, and just puts in a new part.”
The bad economic times and dislocation in American society have already given rise to one mass movement in the United States, the Tea Party, and “another incipient movement,” Occupy Wall Street, Mr. Shachtman observed. The groups, characterized by the passion of their beliefs, “are very far apart but somewhat together in their dissatisfaction,” the author said.
“There has been a big change in American society and Hoffer would be interested in it,” Mr. Shachtman concluded. “He had a wide-ranging mind that wanted to deal with big ideas.”
Mr. Shachtman will read and sign his book Nov. 5, 5 to 7 p.m., at Johnnycake Books in Salisbury, with a second discussion and signing at Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. ■
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