biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1902–83)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in New York City, New York, USA. Unschooled and temporarily blind as a child, he read voraciously after recovering his sight at age 15. At age 18 he went to California and took up work first as a migrant farmer, then a dockworker (from 1943), and began writing in his spare time. His writings, starting with The True Believer (1951), a study of fanaticism and mass movements, won recognition for their pungent, aphoristic style and perceptivity. He retired from the docks in 1967 but continued to be widely celebrated as ‘the longshoreman philosopher’. |
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