The writer’s responsibility

 James Baldwin said, “The responsibility of the writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.”

So much of the American experience seems unhinged to me. Maybe this is a bad example because it’s obvious and easy, but it’s election season in Georgia, and people are saying things that make no sense. Soon, people will do something important — they will vote — based on thinking that makes no sense.

It’s not just our politics. Our beliefs and attitudes about race, religion, the natural world … it’s a long list, these things that don’t make sense but nevertheless influence us.

There’s nothing glorious about these excavations that writers are called to do. Archeologists excavate latrines to see what ancient peoples were fed. It’s an ugly metaphor, but it’s apt. We Americans, especially, are fed so much stuff that isn’t good for us, isn’t good for anyone.

Each generation needs people who will look at and question what it’s being fed.

Today’s Baldwin’s birthday. He was born in 1924 in Harlem. I think his essays are best.

The quoted remark came from a conversation with Nikki Giovanni. Several were recorded for broadcast and were published as A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni in 1973.

What would Hoffer say?

 Eric Hoffer probably ought to come with health warnings, like those for cigarettes and alcohol. But I read him anyway.

People who read Hoffer usually talk about The True Believer. But I like his collections of items — not knowing what else to call his jottings. I was once told that Reflections on the Human Condition is a collection of aphorisms. But some of the items are several paragraphs long. No. 18 is more than 600 words.

Reflections is a strange book. I read it because of things like this:

 

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

 

I wonder what he would think of the hysteria against immigrants today.

• Source: Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition; New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974, p. 34.