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The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage) | 
| Author: Lewis Hyde
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $10.17
You Save: $4.78 (32%)
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 2239
Media: Paperback
Edition: 25 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307279502
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.3
EAN: 9780307279507
Publication Date: December 4, 2007
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Product Description
By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities. Widely available again after twenty-five years, this book is even more necessary today than when it first appeared. An illuminating and transformative book, and completely original in its view of the world, The Gift is cherished by artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. It is in itself a gift to all who discover the classic wisdom found in its pages.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Bad-boy critic deploys magic charm against vampire economy May 23, 2008
62 out of 71 found this review helpful
This book has been published under various subtitles since it first appeared in 1983: "Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property", "How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World" and "Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World". None of these quite captures what it really is, and that's probably because the book doesn't know what it really is, either. Lewis Hyde takes obvious delight in his work's ability to defy categorization or the pithy summary. Unique books have that quality. So do many that are poorly written. It took me a while to figure out which kind this is.
Hyde's central theorem - that true art does, and must of its nature, stand outside the market economy, and this therefore presents a serious problem for the artist forced to live in a world increasingly subsumed by the market economy - could have achieved its full elaboration in the space of a single chapter. In the first half of the book we get that, but we also get quite a lot of wide-ranging argument about economics and the traditional tribal life of gift exchange. Not all of this is relevant, but it's all admittedly fascinating. Less fascinating are Hyde's attempts to locate contemporary examples. For example, he argues rather unconvincingly that the scientific community is "a gift community to the extent that its ideas move as gifts". Fair enough, but the extent to which they do in fact move as gifts is negligible. Scientists are among the most egotistical, petty and jealously self-serving academics ever born. Science isn't about sharing ideas, or not only that. It's about promoting "my ideas" and having "my name" forever associated with them. It's about personal prestige and glory. Ask any scientist how he or she would feel about all work being published in journals anonymously, and used thereafter without attribution.
The second half of the book is given over to two long essays on poets, and here Hyde - a poet himself - is clearly on stronger ground. One is a very engaging treatment of Walt Whitman which traces elements of "the gift" idea through his poetry and sad personal life, though for some inexplicable reason Hyde doesn't quite want to state clearly what he constantly implies: that Whitman's charitable works had a good deal more sublimated homosexuality in them than they did Christian love for his fellow man. The other is an interesting analysis of Ezra Pound which traces the arc of his genius and generosity, and yet doesn't hold back from depicting him as a frustrated bigot and fascist lunatic who only recanted his vile "suburban prejudice" (anti-Semitism) at the very end.
The conclusion and afterword link elements of the gift argument to the support for the arts in postwar America and its relationship to the Cold War.
Margaret Atwood overstated the case when she apparently called this book "a masterpiece". It's very good, but it isn't that. It's overlong, weirdly structured, and in places poorly argued. Hyde often makes huge leaps in order to connect the "evidence" with his argument, or asks us to assume an assertion is true and then builds a case on the assertion without ever coming back to prove it. Disappointingly, there is very little synthesis here, nothing that binds all of these ideas into a consistent argument - and very little in the way of recommendations about how art might flourish in a market economy. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. I came away from this book uplifted and refreshed, with a whole new way of looking at Whitman and Pound, and a new way of looking at art's place in the world. There really is no place for art in the market economy, and that's probably why art will outlive it. There is something primal and fundamentally human in art and "the gift" economy on which it relies. Both are necessary functions of human life.
 Information about this edition March 2, 2008
21 out of 26 found this review helpful
I may do an actual review later after some more reading, but some people may want to know, as I did, what relationship this book has to some other slightly differently named books by Lewis Hyde that were published under starting name "The Gift".
On the copyright page it states: Originally published in hardcover as "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property" in a slightly different form in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and published in paperback in a slightly different form in the United states by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York in 1983.
Update #1: This edition has a three page preface from 2007. It also has a 16 page chapter from 2007 entitled "On Being Good Ancestors: Afterword to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition".
splendidly thoughtful almost philosophical January 5, 2008
12 out of 24 found this review helpful
well so far so good, I have not finished this book yet. it is a bit long for me, not being much of a book finisher. But it is a nice slow read if you keep with it. it makes me think alot and it takes me a while to apply some of his persectives to my life. Ah but when I do! it is a very rewarding experience and truly gets me far more excited about the digging through the rest of this book. It is a bit to filled with old world tales or obscure facts about the unusual scitzophrenic rate in scottland for my tastes. Yet these stories do work and I am reminded of my philosophy 101 teacher who said, "you can tell by how well someone can illustrate something, how well they understand what they are tallking about", so over illustration is not a bad thing to me, because I do sense and feel how deeply this author believes in what he is talking about. You get the feeling he spent his whole life thinking about it. The tone reminds me of listening to my beloved father inlaw who grew up driving tractors at 11 yrs old Nebraska. The authors heart like my Father inlaws heart is the real gem of this book. I did not major in philosophy, but this feels like my kind of philosophy. the book does stick to its promise to encourage bedroom musicians and artists struggling with their place in a capitalistic world.
If you need some wholesome optimism, I can say it is working for me.
"Freely you have recieved, Freely give" maybe easier than you think.
 Lost in the words October 14, 2008
9 out of 16 found this review helpful
I had quite a few problems with this book. Let me start by saying that he obviously knows how to put words together. However the first part of the book about the anthropological aspects of the gift culture is not anything new, as he takes excerpts from various works in the field and strings them together. His contemporary example of the scientific community is innacurate. I know from 1st hand experience that the scientific community is highly competitive, and often requests for material from fellow scientists is ignored, or refused. I also could not tie it all together to understand his message. I got lost in the words. The second half is more satisfying but I am puzzled by his choice of Ezra Pound. Pound was obviously mentally ill, and the forgiveness bestowed on him by Ginsberg for his part in encouraging the Holocaust is a pathetic joke. First of Ginsberg was about as Jewish as the pope, and secondly who is he to forgive him? He cannot speak for 6 million dead souls.
As close to the truth as any prose about art can be June 6, 2008
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is the antidote to university education or years in the workforce. It is the same truth that broke my heart rearranged to buck it up again. Mr. Hyde, I only hope someday I can give it back again.
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