BEFORE THE SABBATH

Drivel. Now in his seventies, the philosophical longshoreman decided to keep a diary (from Nov. '74 to June '75), to test his intellectual powers one last time before giving his ""weary mind a blissful Sabbath."" Hoffer may rest assured that his brain is as active as ever, and we may be grateful that he has retired from writing. For this collection of thoughts on politics and history is so full of nasty absurdities--of bias, half-truths, and crazy generalizations--that it can only poison the air of public debate. Heifer rails indiscriminately at Marx (whom he has never read), at the laziness of workers, at the Russians, the British, the French, the Arabs, rebellious students, and radical professors. He sneers at the ""backward two-thirds of the world."" He speculates that if white Rhodesians have 100 times the ""enterprise"" (of their fellow blacks, then Rhodesia's white population is actually 27,000,000, rather than a mere 270,000. In a more innocent, though equally misguided vein, Holler describes the 19th century without qualification as ""stable, rational, hopeful, and free."" If only it hadn't been for that ""accidental, fateful stupidity,"" the First World War, everything would now be rosy. ""I hang on to my prejudices,"" Holler grotesquely declares, ""They are the testicles of my mind."" Maybe he should have kept this ugly habit to himself.