Eric Hoffer: Working and thinking on the waterfront

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jacob
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Eric Hoffer: Working and thinking on the waterfront

Post by jacob »

https://www.amazon.com/Working-Thinking ... 933435291/

This is Hoffer's daily diary over a year. Entries are short and usually start like "Today I worked on [shipname] for N hours. My partner was a .. (very judgemental comments). Followed by equally judgemental thoughts about maybe the book he is reading, a particular culture, the writing process, ...

It shows Hoffer's writing process and his struggle/introspection over the search for "dependable creativity" and a "thread that makes the book write itself". It's also interesting to see how he puts his books together. He wrote some 20 books. During this year he's trying to write a take-down of intellectuals (read "the elites") but that appears never to have resulted in a book.

It also shows an example of a writer+workingman(quadrant). Indeed, for Hoffer, working is part of the creative process as he accomplishes nearly nothing creative when he has extended time off.

It is likely mostly interesting to writers and other creatives. There are a few quotable aphorisms but there are also a lot of culture war commentary that reflected the times during which it was written.

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