The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jul 1, 2009 - Self-Help - 464 pages

“A manifesto of sorts for anyone who makes art [and] cares for it.” —Zadie Smith

“The best book I know of for talented but unacknowledged creators. . . . A masterpiece.” —Margaret Atwood

“No one who is invested in any kind of art . . . can read The Gift and remain unchanged.” —David Foster Wallace


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. 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.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Eight The Commerce of the Creative Spirit
185
Nine A Draft of Whitman
208
Conclusion
356
On Being Good Ancestors
369
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

Allen Ginsberg artist asked become begin bestowal body bridewealth brother brotherhood called Calvin Cantos capital century chapter circle commerce commodity copper creative culture Czeslaw Milosz D. H. Lawrence dead death donor economic erotic example Ezra Pound faith feel generosity gift economy gift exchange Ginsberg give given grass gratitude Hermes ideas imagination increase Kula labor Leaves Leaves of Grass live loan Luther marriage Marshall Sahlins Mauss modern mother move Mussolini nature never objects offered Osiris Paper Chase person poem poet poetry political potlatch reciprocity return gift Robert Bly Sahlins seems Selected Prose sense servant social society someone song soul speak spirit story strangers T. S. Eliot tale tells things tion trade tribal tribe turn Uduk usura usury wealth Whitman woman women write wrote York

About the author (2009)

Lewis Hyde was born in Boston in 1945 and studied at both Minnesota and Iowa universities. His hugely acclaimed essay, "Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking," in part sprang out of his experiences as an alcoholism counselor, but he is also a highly regarded poet in his own right whose poetry and essays have been widely published. He is a MacArthur Fellow, a former director of creative writing at Harvard and, alongside The Gift, he is the author of the equally acclaimed Trickster Makes This World. He lives in Ohio, where he is completing a third book.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
AuthorLewis Hyde
PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009
ISBN0307567605, 9780307567604
Length464 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Art / Criticism & Theory
Literary Criticism / American / General
Self-Help / Creativity
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan