You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
The Gift is a book of two parts, the first is a deep exploration of a gift as a form of sharing, as a flow across people (mostly) and the second is an illustration of artistic ability as a gift through the life and work of Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound. The author writes of practices from different tribes about gift-giving, elaborately and effectively describing how the practice of gift-giving varies from other forms of exchange in both conception and effects. It is a good study on one aspect of human life in communities. But the author could have been more economical in writing. The second half was unreachable for me, both due to my inability to relate to poetry and the lack of connection of a lot of the material from the concepts from the first half. The section on Walt Whitman seemed to slip from portraying his concepts of gifts and bounties that abound in life to very loosely connected stories that were only mildly interesting in this context.
I picked this up at a bookstore where I was killing some time before an appointment. I read the preface and the introduction and wept through them both. I left for my appointment, thinking I'd have to find a used copy of this book sometime and read it. A couple of hours later, I had to go back and buy it because I was still thinking about it. So it lit a fire under me, for sure. Whether or not it fulfilled the promise of that fire is still up for debate. The preface and the intro are really easy reading and point at some really salient issues. The actual text kind of does a dance around the issue at hand. We're supposed to read the author's analysis of gift-giving as a metaphor for the artistic experience and make the connections ourselves, I suspect. And sometimes I could. Other times, it was such a stretch and the academic style of writing so alienating, I could barely manage to pay attention, let alone make expansive inferences.
He's on to something about value and the arts and an alternate currency/markets but I longed for solutions, not just more examples of the schism in culture that creates market-driven art. The literary analysis of Whitman and Pound were fascinating, sure - but for me didn't really help me understand all that much more about art and the modern world. Mostly, I walked away from that section feeling pretty depressed that two of our great authors lived in poverty for most of their lives. Also, I left with a fear that my sense of moral outrage about the treatment of artists in this culture could lead me to a life like Ezra Pound's and a fascination with fascism. I mean, no, I'm not going to become a fascist like Pound, but somehow Hyde's arguments make me feel how easily a person could slide down that slippery slope. All of which leaves the question hanging about how to balance the gifts of art, artists, et al.
But paragraphs like these show up, too and this is what stokes the fire:
"Every culture offers its citizens an image of what it is to be a man or woman of substance. There have been times and places in which a person came into his or her social being through the dispersal of his gifts, the "big man" or "big woman" being that one through whom the most gifts flowed. The mythology of a market society reverses the picture: getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantial person, and the hero is "self-possessed," "self-made." So long as these assumptions rule, a disquieting sense of triviality, or worthlessness even, will nag the man or woman who labors in the service of a gift and whose products are not adequately described as commodities. When we reckon our substance by our acquisitions, the gifts of the gifted man are powerless to make him substantial."
And this quote from May Sarton:
"There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gift to those that one loves most. . . The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up."
True true and true. But how do we fix it?
There are gems in the straw of this book. It's absolutely worth reading. Just put your University hat on before you do and don't expect any clear answers, either.
He's on to something about value and the arts and an alternate currency/markets but I longed for solutions, not just more examples of the schism in culture that creates market-driven art. The literary analysis of Whitman and Pound were fascinating, sure - but for me didn't really help me understand all that much more about art and the modern world. Mostly, I walked away from that section feeling pretty depressed that two of our great authors lived in poverty for most of their lives. Also, I left with a fear that my sense of moral outrage about the treatment of artists in this culture could lead me to a life like Ezra Pound's and a fascination with fascism. I mean, no, I'm not going to become a fascist like Pound, but somehow Hyde's arguments make me feel how easily a person could slide down that slippery slope. All of which leaves the question hanging about how to balance the gifts of art, artists, et al.
But paragraphs like these show up, too and this is what stokes the fire:
"Every culture offers its citizens an image of what it is to be a man or woman of substance. There have been times and places in which a person came into his or her social being through the dispersal of his gifts, the "big man" or "big woman" being that one through whom the most gifts flowed. The mythology of a market society reverses the picture: getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantial person, and the hero is "self-possessed," "self-made." So long as these assumptions rule, a disquieting sense of triviality, or worthlessness even, will nag the man or woman who labors in the service of a gift and whose products are not adequately described as commodities. When we reckon our substance by our acquisitions, the gifts of the gifted man are powerless to make him substantial."
And this quote from May Sarton:
"There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gift to those that one loves most. . . The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up."
True true and true. But how do we fix it?
There are gems in the straw of this book. It's absolutely worth reading. Just put your University hat on before you do and don't expect any clear answers, either.
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
I definitely liked the parts of this book and will take a lot away from it. The book doesn't quite cohere as a whole, however. It's one thing if a scientific paper begins with a hypothesis that is disproven at the end, but when a book does something like that, it's unsettling, though interesting. The first part of the book is fairly scholarly, part fairy tale and part economics text, and I liked it in very different ways from the second half of the book, which profiles two poets, Whitman and Pound. The conclusion, however, was a big thud. The afterword, written for the new edition in 2007, saved the book, giving me most of what I wanted from the conclusion. Be sure to read the 2007 edition!
3.5. A chaotic journey, due to an overabundance of observations and things to say stretching (sometimes breaking) the scope of Hyde's stated purpose. But incredibly rich, too; I'd rather my mind be given too much than too little to chew on, and this long, learned, erudite meditation on the meaning(s) of artistic "gift" lands well on the right side in that sense.
broad, lovely book about the importance of creativity in the modern world. a dense read, but the payoff is a desperate desire to create.
Years after reading this book it still simmers away inside my skull. The anthropology is flawed and it won't be everyone's bag, but as a long prose poem about art and commerce, ownership and creativity, it's beautiful and profound.
To be honest, I didn't read the *whole* thing as I got the gist of Hyde's points and was ready to move on. However, I think he does a fine job providing a framework to think about the role of gifts in weaving community and the dilemma of the artist, whose art is a gift, but who must also traffic in a commodity-driven culture. A very informative read!
What a beautiful book, one whose ideas I will think on for a long while and one whose pages I am sure will revisit again.