"The Gift" by Lewis Hyde - some thoughts
“A classic… If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act, or make films, read The Gift.” That headline quote by Margaret Atwood was a significant influence on me buying and reading this book. I had also encountered other glowing references. Sorry Margaret et al, I don’t agree.
Things start well enough. The first section, “A Theory of Gifts”, was interesting and informative. Hyde’s review of West Coast First Nations’ traditions of the Potlatch and the culture surrounding it, clarified what little I knew about this aspect of different histories. The chapter on Usury was also enlightening. But it was dry, not related to current arts, and frankly, boring.
I had greater hopes for the second section, “Two Experiments in Gift Aesthetics”. The “highlight”, and it was a dim one, was the middle chapter, “A Draft of Whitman”. I knew little of Walt Whitman or his works, apart from what Maria Popova has mentioned (many times!) in her weekly mailings. It was sufficiently interesting though, for me to order “Leaves of Grass”. This will be my first purchase of a book of poetry, so I suppose it’s about time.
The last chapter, “Ezra Pound and the Fate of Vegetable Money”, was dull and disheartening. The main thing I took away from this chapter was that Pound was a Fascist traitor. He did recant at the end of his life, but the damage he had done outlived him.
The Conclusion was perhaps the only section to have any practical observations. The core of those conclusions is that artistic creativity and commercial success have a vanishingly small relation to each other. “Get a Patron, or sell out” seems to be the core conclusion. What a crushingly obvious observation after so many dull hours meandering through tangential subjects!
For me, the best and most interesting part was the Afterword in the 25th anniversary edition in 2007. Here, Hyde makes the observation that public funding of the Arts in the USA collapsed by half upon the collapse of the USSR. He makes it clear that he speaks only of the American experience, but still…
This observation is presumably factual and thus, severely depressing. If public funding of the Arts is based mainly on military considerations, what does that say of our culture?
Atwood, in The Paris Review said that “The Gift” is “such an essential work”. Some reviews on GoodReads are not so positive. Reviewer “Andrew” summed it up as “…the majority of the book is boring and its value doubtful… Disappointing”. I agree, Andrew!
Or, and this is of course a distinct possibility, I’m missing something. Please share your thoughts in the Comments!