Eric Hoffer - Biography

Biography

Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902, the son of Elsa (née Goebel) and Knut Hoffer, a cabinetmaker. His parents were immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma, commenting "I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and for a time my memory". After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.

Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Hoffer then took a bus to Los Angeles in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs.

In 1931, he considered committing suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels". A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read the Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent". During the 1930s, he wrote a novel, Four Years in Young Hank's Life, and a novelette, Chance and Mr. Kunze, both partly autobiographical, and a long article about his experiences and revelations in a federal work camp, "Tramps and Pioneers". The fictional work was never published, but a truncated version of the article was published by Harper's Magazine after Hoffer became well known.

Hoffer attempted to enlist in the Armed forces in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. To contribute to the war effort, he worked as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. During this period he began to write.

Hoffer retired from the docks in 1967 and from public life in 1970. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.

He died at his home in San Francisco on May 21, 1983 at the age of 80.