Working Class Roots
Hoffer was influenced by his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:
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- My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight,
- in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch.
- Towns are too distracting.
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He once remarked, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors as a "longshoreman philosopher".
Read more about this topic: Eric Hoffer
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