Blue Collar Intellectuals by Daniel J. Flynn

Author:Daniel J. Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Gateway
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Invention of Eric Hoffer

“All we know about his early life is what Hoffer chose to tell us,” Tom Bethell points out.12 What Hoffer told us makes such a compelling tale that his life story, often repeated, was never questioned. On the dust jackets of his books, in newspaper profiles, and in television introductions, Hoffer’s fans invariably came across the Dickensian narrative involving blindness and then miraculous sight, parental loss, skid row, and life on the bum. Everybody who had encountered Hoffer in these unforgettable years had apparently forgotten him. No single person who knew him before fame found him on the San Francisco waterfront came forward to say that they knew him way back when.

Just as he had escaped the memories of acquaintances during these first four decades, Hoffer escaped the state’s notice. He bequeathed no birth certificate, diplomas, selective service papers, or passport for researchers to inspect. Hoffer lived off the grid. The last free American, Hoffer fired his employers at will, moved on a whim, and played the invisible man to the all-seeing state. It is the mystery of Eric Hoffer, as much as the myth, which fascinates us. Like the Hoffer that appeared to friends, the Hoffer that appears to history is a guarded figure telling some, hiding some. Like those who knew him, we will never truly know him. Naturally, since we want to know what we do not know, we want to know Eric Hoffer.

In 1937, the wanderer’s existence was independently verified. He revealed himself by filling out a Social Security application. But the state’s affirmation of his existence only adds to the mystery. Rather than the 1902 birth he later officially maintained, Hoffer listed his date of birth as July 25, 1898. Why would he later subtract four years from his life? Perhaps he sought to join the fight in World War II or obscure not joining it in World War I. Maybe the age reduction helped a fortysomething sans experience gain admission to the longshoreman’s union. Did the auguries of numerology influence him to manipulate his birth date along with the men he observed in the New Deal camp? “He wanted to be part of this century, and not of the past,” theorized Lili Osborne, his longtime companion.13

As he wanted to be of the present and not the past, Hoffer wanted to be a man of the New World and not the Old. Allegedly born in the Bronx to German immigrants from Alsace, he spoke with a heavy European accent that seemed to migrate among Germany, Spain, and Italy, which appeared to give his expressive hands their permanent dialect. Could that foreign accent have come from the Bronx? “That’s what he said,” Osborne dryly commented. “Theoretically, he was born in the Bronx.”14

And what of his dramatic tale of sight lost and then regained? “He told stories,” his companion playfully explained. “How much do you believe in stories?”15

But Hoffer’s greatest creation was not his life story. It was a slim book.

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