The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World

New
Paperback
2007
$10.23

First published in America in 1979, The Gift is a modern classic. This inspiring examination of the 'gift economy' is even more relevant now than when it originally appeared. It's a brilliantly argued defence of the place of creativity in our increasingly market-orientated society.

Synopsis

First published in America in 1979, The Gift is a modern classic. This inspiring examination of the 'gift economy' is even more relevant now than when it originally appeared. It's a brilliantly argued defence of the place of creativity in our increasingly market-orientated society.

$10.23

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Edition: Main
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
Published: 06 Sep 2007
ISBN 10: 1841959936
ISBN 13: 9781841959931
Book Overview: An accessible and thought-provoking discussion of the dilemma between 'art' as art, and 'art' as product

Media Reviews

The Gift actually deserves the hyperbolic praise that in most blurbs is so empty. It is the sort of book that you remember where you were and even what you were wearing when you first picked it up. The sort that you hector friends about until they read it too. This is not just formulaic blurbspeak; it is the truth. No one who is invested in any kind of art, in questions of what real art does and doesn't have to do with money, spirituality, ego, love, ugliness, sales, politics, morality, marketing, and whatever you call 'value', can read The Gift and remain unchanged. -- David Foster Wallace
Persuasive and fascinatingly illustrated, The Gift profits immensely from the modesty and unpretentiousness of Hyde's writing and the fascinated good nature with which he expounds his propositions. -- Tim Martin * * Independent on Sunday * *
A masterpiece - The Gift is the best book I know of for the aspiring young, for talented but unacknowledged creators, or even for those who have achieved material success and are worried that this means they've sold out. -- Margaret Atwood
Brilliant - by the time he is done he has folded language, culture and the very habit of being human into his ken. * * New Yorker * *
Hyde argues passionately that creativity is one of the most valuable commodities in our progressively more materialistic society. Acclaimed by writers and artists since its first publication 30 years ago, his book will change the way you look at life. * * Good Book Guide * *

Author Bio

Lewis Hyde was born in Boston and studied at the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa. In addition to The Gift, he is the author of Trickster Makes This World, a portrait of the disruptive imagination all cultures need if they are to remain lively and open to change. Editor of On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg and The Essays of Henry D Thoreau, Hyde is now writing a defence of the 'cultural commons', that vast store of ideas and art we have inherited from the past. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of creative writing at Harvard, Hyde is currently the Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in Ohio.