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dominated as the core of the thing begins to give. It bends to your will. The paneled section falls away and the last supporting beam is pounded out of place leaving nothing where something has been. Destruction is very creative. Is the same instant behind both? To make something, to unmake something, gives equal gratification in some cases.

March 3 73

Leslie Thomas - NYT. March 4 73 - travel p13

I remain convinced, and with no originality , that America is the richest, poorest, most generous, meanest, most beautiful, most ugly, most advanced, most childish, most ignorant, most literate place in the world. And that is just on one street.

March 5 73

Had supper with Eric Hoffer tonight. He is in town to do publicity for his new book. He has just left the taping of the Parr show. We meet for an hour and a half. I come home and later that night he appears on my television screen. He is the last person on and at the end of the program the applause continues during the fade out, he rises, quickly says goodbye to

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Parr and heads for the stage exit. He is coming to meet me. Yet we have already met. Time sequences are so easily jumbled in our age.

He is so dynamic it's unbelievable, his sense of presence and his resonate deep voice, he commands attention waiters do not disappear. He is impervious to attention from other dinners, as his voice rises to make a point. He says he is not nervous on T.V. as he has never watched him self. He urges me to come to S.F. and live is ready to fly me there now, first class. I dearly love him, including his faults. He is such an original man, a type American seems to produce from time to time. they spring from the soil of the masses. Self willed, Ruggle[?] and Ives were such men. Independent, strong, determined. Honest and unafraid to say what they feel. Hoffer is so naive at times and yet so full of knowledge and wisdom. Of course the image he projects publicly is only partly true. He has had many self doubts and is not always so positive. But I think he is truly enjoying his last years because of Lili. I do not think he will write too much more. The new book actually is a restatement of things he has said before.