FEATURED AUTHOR
JOHN HOFFMAN

John Hoffman burst into the national spotlight in 1993 with the release of The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving, an authoritative and seminal book on the subject of urban scavenging that mixed the author's weirdly insightful stories and philosophy with gritty how-to advice. Originally thought to be doomed to critical failure (the thought being that the people who would want the book were probably too cheap to buy it and therefore it had no market), Hoffman's tome instead achieved worldwide critical acclaim and commentary in every form of mass media.

Hoffman has since continued to spread his pungent message in supermarket tabloids, Hollywood talk shows, serious pieces of investigative journalism, Playboy magazine, even a syndicated weekly radio program in South Africa. No matter what the medium, Hoffman looks for an angle to keep the dumpster discourse in our nation's mass consciousness. In fact, he put the term "dumpster diving" into the nation's ordinary daily lexicon.

In the year 2002, it seems incredible that a decade ago members of the media asked, "What's that?" when the phrase was mentioned. Now everybody seems to know an open and avowed dumpster diver in their own neighborhood. In fact, one of the firemen who died in the terrorist attack on New York was fondly described by friends as somebody who "could not drive past a dumpster without seeing something good worth taking out." This nation has, to a degree, embraced and accepted dumpster divers.

Hoffman's considerable efforts to promote the "dumpster-diving lifestyle" were instrumental in destroying a misconception common in the early 1990s that this activity was the sole realm of desperate homeless people scavenging for aluminum cans. Now dumpster diving is commonly known to be the realm of activists, artists, and resourceful freethinkers snatching some of the goodies from modern society's shameful stream of wanton waste.

Since Hoffman helped kick off a national discussion about urban scavenging, at least one federal law has been passed that affords greater liability protection to stores and restaurants making donations of soon-to-be discarded food to shelters and soup kitchens. Numerous Web sites that have sprung up around the topic of dumpster diving pay homage to Hoffman's trashy trailblazing, and his first book is inevitably recommended to neophytes of the scavenging lifestyle not only as the authoritative text but, even more so, a really fun read.

This author's relative youth at the time he wrote his opus dumpus (he was in his late 20s when he started writing the work) astonished readers, some of whom traced their own scrounging experience to the Great Depression and yet found Hoffman keenly insightful.

John Hoffman has always heavily credited his parents for teaching him The Way of the Dumpster. The Hoffmans started a family late in both of their lives and were forced to fall back upon their 1930s-era scrounging skills to provide such basic needs as furniture, appliances, reading material, clothing, food (yes, food!), and so forth. Rather than finding enough bare-bones necessities to eke by, the Hoffman family found a dumpster-diving lifestyle that was weirdly opulent.

"Imagine if you were a pirate who preyed only upon rummage sales, taking everything that appealed to you," Hoffman explains. "The books, the clothing, the appliances, the weird knick-knacks, just anything and everything you could possibly encounter at a rummage sale. That's kind of what the dumpster-diving lifestyle is like--a lifetime free pirate pass to all the rummage sales in the world. Only suppose you also felt free to raid grocery stores, yet the grocery stores always put up more of a fight, so your more fungible loot was always a little more damaged or a bit ripe by the time you got it back to your island. There you go, matey. That's what it's like. Part piracy, part rummage sale, with lots of bruised fruit."

Hoffman's father, Willard, was a sergeant at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was stationed there during the attack on December 7, 1941. A brawling womanizer with a terse yet enthralling storytelling style, Willard was personally known to the author of From Here to Eternity, who was stationed in Hawaii during that same period. Hoffman's mother, a saintly one-woman social work department who spent part of her life under the tutelage of nuns in an orphanage, commands a wild, wordy storytelling style full of animation, neologisms, and imaginative tangents. Hoffman's style and emphasis is a hybrid of both, profane and profound, grittily grounded yet filled with flights of fancy.

Before he was even born, Hoffman was drawing his sustenance from the trash behind grocery stores. Born into the dumpster-diving lifestyle, growing up amid mountains of scavenged books, Hoffman excelled in academics. His favorite reading material in the fourth grade was a 1949 Worldbook Encyclopedia that his parents scrounged from an abandoned schoolhouse in Kansas.

"It's amazing what you find in old books," Hoffman says. "There is a whole section in that encyclopedia about how DDT is a modern wonder that can save the world. There is a picture of refugee children in Europe being sprayed with DDT to kill lice. It makes you wonder what things being said by the government today with such a tone of authority are not only false but very harmful."

Even in high school, Hoffman frequently shocked the system by, for example, single-handedly organizing a lunchroom boycott and demanding reforms, or requesting books through interlibrary loan that involved revolution, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare. Hoffman has a degree magna cum laude in English writing and has been published in scores of "unstable little publications with cheap ink that stains the fingers" for the last two decades. Most of his writings have been about down-and-dirty street-level activist efforts with which he was sympathetic or actively involved. Though Hoffman is quite prolific, as much seems to get written about him as by him.

At one point in the late 1990s, right after his dumpster book achieved worldwide fame, Hoffman had a book deal for a novel with a big Madison Avenue publisher. However, after his favorite editor was fired in a corporate purge, Hoffman told his new editor to go to hell and walked off with his hefty advance.

"He was such a literary lightweight," Hoffman explains. "He used to edit shallow materialist books about professional wrestlers and rock stars."

Weirdly enough, the novel (Love Children of the Cartoon Cult), scheduled to be published in 1999, foretold the disruption of a national election. Having read the "leaves" of society all his life and seen on a daily and even hourly basis what was not meant to be seen, Hoffman has become a prophet amid the puke . . . a guru of garbage. His writing can be funny, disturbing, enraging, and enlightening, all on the same page. As one reviewer put it, "At times it was difficult to find a single sentence without some offensive element." And yet, with Hoffman, readers always seem to keep what they like and throw out the rest, something he explicitly encourages.

His adventures have taken him all over North America and through numerous jobs--from living in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, to working on a military psychiatric ward in El Paso, Texas, to participating in the 1999 uprising against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington. Hoffman briefly held a city council seat in Grand Forks, North Dakota, as a "green libertarian," apparently the first card-carrying member of the Green Party to hold office in the history of that sadly depressed state. This past summer, he challenged the establishment in a protest campaign, running upon the single issue of disgusting and overwhelming "industrial stink" from a facility that makes fries used by McDonald's.

"I achieved the green dream of more than 5 percent," Hoffman laughs. "I received 6 percent. Of course, Grand Forks makes a point of having its city elections in the summer so all the college students won't have a voice, and they're the ones who endure most of the stink."

In Washington state, Hoffman was notorious for prying open the Seattle Police Department Internal Affairs and Intelligence Units and making records of their scandals highly public. He also challenged the constitutionality of that city's law against sitting on the sidewalk. Now, after being arrested, gassed, shot with a rubber bullet, dragged in handcuffs through bramble bushes by uniformed members of the Seattle Police Department, put on trial for blatant sidewalk sitting, and smeared over and over again in the ink of the establishment, Hoffman is in his second year of law school, quietly pursuing academic excellence.

"Many of my classmates love to party," Hoffman says. "But on weekends and holidays, I prefer nothing more than to curl up with a book about, for example, the Fourth Amendment. There are some really fascinating issues involving searches of trash and the United States Constitution. Long ago, I caught wind of some of this stuff, but now I see all the complex details and how slight pressure in one area might change the whole system. The study of law is giving me a new layer of perception and interpretive ability. I think any human being is elevated by the study of law or medicine. And that is what I seek. To be elevated. To serve the Goddess of Justice."

Living proof, perhaps, that the legal profession is raising its standards.

Q&A

Paladin: John, why another book about dumpster diving? And why now, almost a decade after your first book?
Hoffman: In 1867, John Graham Chambers published what would become known worldwide as the Marquis of Queensbury rules for boxing and thus changed the sport forever . . . or so it was thought! Now, in my explosive new two-volume production, I wanted to throw away the rulebook and turn back the clock to reveal forbidden techniques of extreme boxing.

Paladin: O.K., John, that was last month's author, Mark Hatmaker, who does Extreme Boxing. You just recycled one of his answers. Is that your way of saying you are throwing out your old book and starting all over with this new book, Advanced Dumpster Diving?
Hoffman: Not at all. Why would I throw away a book that continues to earn royalties year after year? My first book covers the basics. This new book is just what the title implies: advanced techniques for those who have mastered the basics. Rather than telling a few brief stories about using dumpster-dived documents to stir up scandals--just kind of letting the reader know, hey, this is one thing you can do and some colorful examples--the book goes into considerable detail. Since I've done so much time in journalism myself, I can look at a document from both sides of the dumpster, as it were, and say what will appeal to the media and what won't. But yes, there is a lot of stuff that is weird, extreme, and forbidden.

Paladin: So Advanced Dumpster Diving just adds more details? Or is there anything new to the sport? Or would you call it a hobby?
Hoffman: A lifestyle. Yes, a lot is new. This book takes dumpster diving into the computer age. The Internet has revolutionized every aspect of society, including dumpster diving. The most major change is eBay. It used to be much more difficult to squeeze money out of scavenged goodies that were--how to say it--cool and interesting, but also odd and obscure. Back in 1994, if you found a script for Star Trek Deep Space Nine while you were poking around the Paramount lot in Hollywood, what the heck would you do with it? Back in then, the answer seemed to be, well, raffle it off to support the local science fiction convention. Nowadays, the answer is different. The answer is to sell the script on eBay. The market for used goods has been revolutionized by eBay, and dumpster divers are a huge source of used goods. It used to be that dumpster diving was the common secret of flea markets. Now it's the common secret of eBay. Dumpster divers have written to me in triumph about all the money they are making.

Paladin: Selling used goods like antiques?
Hoffman: Selling anything and everything. There is a section of the book written by a guy who dives discarded industrial supplies. He started with ball bearings and worked his way up to computers. This man quit his day job in order to make a heck of a lot more money as an industrial diver in the Texas silicon valley. He has captured a highly specialized waste stream, and he is selling it through the Internet.

The main marketing problem with dumpster-dived goods, prior to the Internet, was that everything a diver found was odd and out of place by its very nature. Considerable work was required to, for example, haul boxes of coverless paperbacks to their proper place back in the economy and, from that action, derive a profit worth the effort involved. The Internet eliminates much of the fruitless, tiresome effort. Now the rummage sale, the consignment store, the special person looking for a specialized good is right on your desktop with the click of a mouse. So it doesn't matter what you're selling, whether it's an old cookie jar or a big box of integrated circuits worth thousands of dollars. The Internet has revolutionized the sale of all used goods.

Paladin: Is that the extent of the Internet's impact on dumpster diving?
Hoffman: No. Information has also become more valuable because it can be distributed with such ease. It used to be that if you found, let us say, an incriminating memo . . . well, you had to make photocopies and stick it in an envelope and mail it all over heck, which cost postage and took effort. It's much easier now to scan information and send it as an e-mail attachment. You can also put information on Web sites, and anybody anywhere in the world who is looking for that particular information will find it with a search engine. So if you have a bone to pick with Big Corporation X, and you go out looking for some kind of dirt, you can share what you find with anybody else in the world who also has a beef with Big Corporation X and/or is seeking information about it.

Paladin: And this kind of thing is happening?
Hoffman: All the time. And I want to encourage it, describe it, tell some war stories, and suggest ways it can be done more effectively based on experience gained in the last decade or so, not only by myself but also by other divers who read my last book and wrote to me with their experiences.

Paladin: So you didn't write this book alone?
Hoffman: Many divers wrote this book and are credited to the extent they can be credited without blowing everything for them.

Paladin: So Web sites are being developed about dumpster diving?
Hoffman: Yes. The most exciting ones involve sharing detailed information about good diving locations. This kind of thing is just in its infancy. There is no Web site that could be considered comprehensive or even particularly developed by the standards of highly advanced Internet entities, but these kind of things are starting up, and this is an exciting new direction, the dumpster dot com. I want to draw attention to these efforts, to encourage more of them. Where divers have really done something creative that can be applied more broadly, I want to get the word out.

Paladin: So are exciting things happening in the world of dumpster diving that are not solely because of the Internet?
Hoffman: Increasingly, activists are openly using dumpster-dived goods. They are selling these goods to get resources for their efforts. They are using information obtained in this manner to fight political battles. They are coming to depend on dumpster diving as a method of supplying themselves in different locations where they might travel for various direct-action efforts as routinely as some members of the activist 1930s generation depended on hopping freight trains.

Paladin: You mean locations like where various world trade organizations might meet or political party conventions might be held? In your book you tell stories about the 1999 uprising against the WTO and using dumpster-dived supplies to support that effort, which appears to have been a turning point of sorts for the world. In those sections of the book, you are clearly on the side of the protestors and opposed to the police.
Hoffman: I use those things as examples, and sometimes I take a position, but generally I am in favor of diving dumpsters. I am in favor of the earth and its resources being used for the benefit of human beings, not squandered. I am in favor of people being politically active and grappling with the great questions of the day. Part of the book asks, well, what does it mean to be conservative? Isn't nature very conservative in that no animal or vegetable matter is ever wasted, but is conserved and goes back into the system? So aren't environmentalists some of the most conservative people in the world, since they embrace the original source of all conservative philosophy?

Paladin: Parts of this book are incredibly weird, artistic, and philosophical. Yet you always bring it around to dumpster diving. Why not just stick to the nuts and bolts?
Hoffman: The most successful how-to books are not just technical manuals but convey the spirit and feel of the subject being discussed. So if you want to know about advanced dumpster diving, well, this book will be like spending about a day and a half with the diving master. And, heck, what are we going to talk about while we're walking in all those alleys, avoiding broken glass, and finding goodies? As you can imagine, all along the way, tales will be told and weird philosophical crap will be dissected, just as though you and the master were in that alley, talking back and forth.

Paladin: Some of the things in this book are quite personal and revealing. Some of these things are obviously painful for you.
Hoffman: Yeah, well. Like I said, as though we were in that alley, talking and diving dumpsters, and we come to know each other.

Paladin: You even solicit feedback from readers. You seem fascinated with "feedback" as part of chaos theory. It's wild how you jump from Julia Butterfly to Ludwig Wittgenstein to missing gold-plated Oscars. Yet while "chaos theory" isn't mentioned more than a few times, it seems to influence the whole work.
Hoffman: Much of this book is derived from feedback received from readers, and when the existence of the first book has impacted my life in a weird way, well, I discuss that, because it's part of that "highly advanced" aspect but it's also a "feedback loop." So I am experimenting with chaos theory by putting the "feedback" in this new book and then encouraging a new round of feedback feeding off this feedback. For example, there may not be many divers who have to deal with the issue of diving a dumpster after you've already been there with a television camera crew doing an investigative news story, because they've become dumpster diving celebrities and therefore public figures. But you know what? I would like to see more divers who have to deal with this problem. I can't do it all myself.

Paladin: But in the early 1990s you said that talking about dumpster diving with the media just stirs up anti-dumpster diving programs.
Hoffman: And that is, to a degree, still true. Some places are still very anti-dumpster diving. But so much positive publicity about dumpster diving--much of it generated from the way the first book was positively received--has changed the climate to some degree. This book deals with that changed climate and continues to encourage that attitude shift. If dumpster divers obtain information about evil corporate doings and give it to the media, well, dumpster divers will be heroes and will be discussed in the mass media in more positive ways. This may mean it is beneficial to "play the media's game" and feed them information. If you are feeding the media information obtained from dumpsters, will they be encouraging programs that crack down on dumpster divers? Well, hopefully not. This book discusses the media, how to deal with the media, the way attitudes have shifted about dumpster diving, and so forth, in detail. I discuss the media game in a very colorful and cynical way, but obviously I am having fun playing it.

Paladin: Yes, you said, "the media know I'm their little Nielsen week slut boy."
Hoffman: And others can have fun, too, but the media will be your friend one day and your enemy the next. You have to be careful and think of the greater good, which is the good of the planet. But if you enjoy that sort of media game, if you are good at it, there is a lot of fun to be had and a lot of good to be done on behalf of the dumpster diving tribe. So, hopeful that an army of "Hoffmen" will spring up to fight government and corporate evil, and by doing this help our tribe prosper and continue its development, in Advanced Dumpster Diving there is a lot of discussion about media manipulation in a dumpster-diving context.

In some places, the climate for dumpster diving may have worsened. But worsening climate appears to mean more compactors, not more crackdowns by authorities. But if the authorities are cracking down on YOU, what does it matter if the climate, nationally, is improving? Some dumpster divers in New Jersey got hit hard for diving behind a cosmetics factory and selling their loot at flea markets. In the book, I held them up as heroes. And you know what? It was probably media attention that helped to save their asses, the media crying out, "This is ridiculous!" Were the media doing that to be noble? More likely, they are just pumping more "infotainment" garbage into the world, and dumpster diving can be an entertaining subject. But what's important is that media attention helped those divers, at least from the reports I read.

Could a whole book be written called Heroes of the Dumpster Diving Tribe? Perhaps. I'm not writing it at the moment. Maybe this new book will encourage more books to be written. Maybe you are reading these words, and that book is bubbling around inside of you right this moment. After all, the book that nobody thought could be published successfully has now spawned a sequel.

Paladin: Do you think this book Advanced Dumpster Diving will be a big hit? Will it make a lot of money?
Hoffman: I hope it will have an impact on society. As far as making a lot of money . . . well, I hope all the members of the dumpster-diving tribe who hear of this new book will procure a copy for their local library, so as many people who want to read it will be able to read it as cheaply as possible, with a minimum waste of trees. And I bet you've got some titles sitting around that you don't really want anymore. Get rid of them by taking them to the library and get some new titles. Maybe you could get something from Mark Hatmaker. Mark will teach you a collection of savage punches, head-butts, elbows, and stomps that will enable you to devastate even the toughest opponent!

Paladin: Which brings us right back where we started.
Hoffman: Yes. Just as it should be.

Any questions? If so, please feel free to e-mail John.

DUMPSTER DIVING, THE ADVANCED COURSE
How to Turn Other People's Trash into Money, Publicity, and Power