Don’t Quit The Day Job:
Work, play, or passion?
By Marshall J. Cook
When I lived in the Bay Area of Northern California years ago, San Francisco’s “philosopher longshoreman,” Eric Hoffer, was something of a celebrity, I suppose because we don’t expect to get our philosophy from someone who sweats and grunts for a living. But the position of Philosopher King has never paid enough to sustain life, and a man has to eat, doesn’t he?
Hoffer’s plan was to work just long enough at a job to save enough money to quit. Every time he slipped the noose of the salary man, he went to the library and read books. He held library cards in six California towns, so he’d always have access to books no matter where his wanderings took him.
Hoffer was born in New York City in 1902. When he was seven years old, his mother died, and shortly thereafter, young Hoffer mysteriously went blind. He stayed that way for eight years and then, just as mysteriously, recovered his sight.
Eager to catch up on what he had missed, he started reading everything he could get his mitts on. Of all the books he encountered along the way, the Essays of Montaigne was his favorite, and he carried a copy in the little rucksack he lugged everywhere he went.
Between trips to the library, he worked as a dishwasher, a factory worker, a farm hand, and a longshoreman, anything he could get to keep him in food and books.
As with so many of us, this avid reader became in time a writer. The first book he submitted for publication was a handwritten manuscript, which was published in 1951 as The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
Many more books followed, among them:
Reflections of the Human Condition
The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
The Ordeal of Change
Truth ImaginedThe Temper of Our Time
First Things, Last Things
Was he any good as a self-appointed Philosopher King? I’m not one to judge (although I did minor in philosophy in college, creative writing apparently not being impractical enough as a major). I’ll let you be the judge; here’s a sampling of Hoffer’s quoted notions:
“A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful, and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.”
“Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.”
“Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”
“In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
“It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.”
In a society prone to apply simple labels, Hoffer presents a challenge. Just what was he? Itinerant manual laborer doesn’t look like much on a resume. Neither does ‘passionate reader of books,’ although Lord knows, we need them, now more than ever, or else what are all our scribbles for? Because he published, our culture awards him the title “author.” Dewey and his decimals gave his books a 100 classification, attesting to his credentials as “philosopher.” He certainly looked like a philosopher, with his soft cloth cap and white beard, but I don’t think he particularly aspired to the title. And anyway, show me the high school counselor who would advise his or her charges to pursue ‘philosopher’ as a career path.
That’s just it. Hoffer didn’t want a career. He just needed a job, so he could make enough money to feed himself and fuel his passions– reading, thinking, and writing about the nature of life and the world and his little place in it.
His books are still in print, by the way. You can find them in his beloved libraries or buy them in nice paperback editions, just perfect for toting around in your rucksack as you pursue your own passions.
