When San Francisco had a thriving commercial seaport in the 1950's, the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer made his literary debut with The True Believer.
By Paul Duclos
Published: October, 2016
When San Francisco had a thriving commercial seaport in the 1950’s, the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer made his literary debut with The True Believer.
In this brilliant work, the self-educated dockworker analyzed and attempted to explain the motives of the various types of personalities giving rise to mass movements; why and how mass movements start, progress and end; and the similarities between them, whether religious, political, radical or reactionary.
He argued that even when their stated goals or values differ, mass movements are interchangeable, that adherents will often flip from one movement to another, and that the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable.
Thus, religious, nationalist and social movements, whether radical or reactionary, tend to attract the same type of followers, behave in the same way and use the same tactics and rhetorical tools. As examples, he often refers to Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Christianity, Protestantism and Islam.
The first and best-known of Hoffer’s books, The True Believer has been published in more than 25 editions since its debut in 1951. We recently came across Hoffer’s The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms, and it too contains many insights that might explain today’s cultural conundrums.
Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983. Each year Hoffer is memorialized through the Eric Hoffer Award for prose and books. This award was founded at the start of the 21st century (with permission from the Eric Hoffer estate) to honor freethinking writers and independent books of exceptional merit.
The commercial environment for today’s writers has all but crushed the circulation of ideas. It seems strange that in the Information Age, many books are blocked from wider circulation and powerful writing is barred from publication or buried alive on the internet.
Furthermore, many of the top literary prizes will not consider independent books, choosing instead to become the marketing arms of large presses. The Hoffer Award-honored books are from small, academic and micro presses, including self-published offerings. Throughout the centuries, writers such as Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf have taken the path of self-publishing, rather than have their ideas forced into a corporate or sociopolitical mold.
Today, small and academic presses struggle in this same environment. The Hoffer Award will continue to be a platform for and the champion of the independent voice. Winners of the Hoffer are given prizes, honors and worldwide media exposure, as well as being covered in the US Review of Books.
Nominated books are judged by independent panels within 18 all-inclusive categories. The annual grand prize winner is awarded a $2,000 cash prize. Each category is assigned a winner, runner up, and multiple honorable mentions. Recognition is given to the best academic, small, micro and self-published presses. The Montaigne Medal is awarded to the most thought-provoking books. The da Vinci Eye honors exceptional cover art. The First Horizon Award is given to the best first-time authors. Each year, the Eric Hoffer Award results are publicly announced in the spring, and every nominee is notified via the contact email on their registration form.
To learn more about entering your work of the work of someone you admire, write to: The Eric Hoffer Award,
PO Box 11, Titusville, NJ 08560.
City Lights Booksellers and Publishers has just released a new tome that Hoffer himself would surely enjoy. The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe by Stephon Alexander is a complex and obtuse read, but well worth the energy. The effort has met with mixed literary reviews, but we favor how City Lights describes it:
“More than 50 years ago, John Coltrane drew the twelve musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane had put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander returns the favor, using jazz to answer physics’ most vexing questions about the universe.”
Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics—a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein and Rakim—The Jazz of Physics revisits the ancient realm where music, physics and the cosmos were one. This cosmological journey accompanies Alexander’s own tale of struggling to reconcile his passion for music and physics, from taking music lessons as a boy in the Bronx to studying theoretical physics at Imperial College, London’s inner sanctum of string theory. Playing the saxophone and improvising with equations, Alexander uncovered the connection between the fundamental waves that make up sound and the fundamental waves that make up everything else. As he reveals, the ancient poetic idea of the “music of the spheres,” taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics. For more info, see www.citylights.com.
Follow Paul Duclos’ Cultural Currents online with his blog at: paulduclosonsanfranciscoculture.blogspot.com
