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A review by elly29
Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
What an interesting book. I was unsure of the narration at first and the introduction, but I've really come around to what Chabon had to say. His scope of trying to understand the role that trickster figures have in mythology and culture is truly staggering: though he focuses on several major figures in various myths (Hermes, Loki, Coyote, Monkey King, Krishna, Legba), his statements do skew towards Western canons.
Really, staggering. A few key takeaways:
1. Tricksters introduce concepts of hunger, which is frequently paired with death. (They eat something, thereby introducing death. See the case of Hermes stealing and eating Apollo's sacred cattle. Previously they were immortal?) Often, tricksters do not wholly indulge their hunger.
2. Tricksters are inventors and culture-creators (think Prometheus stealing fire; artifice is done by "art" which can imitate, and therefore "lie", about what something is). Tricksters travel so widely that they know that items take on different meanings depending on context (ie Homer's Odysseus travels so far from the sea that his oar is mistaken for a winnowing tool).
3. Tricksters cross the boundaries between the sacred and the profane (and life/death; in general they are just beings that dwell in the liminal, in the uncertain). The discussion around Mary Douglas' work on dirt -- being dependent on context -- was fascinating. Indeed, the Legba / Maya story about dishwater, and that Legba splashes dishwater on her causes Maya to leave the earth was very interesting. And in such tricky stories about a trickster's transgression is indeed how the trickster makes/reshapes the world around him to better suit him (or create a place for himself that didn't exist in the previous world)
4. ...and that is why tricksters often (initially) challenge the status quo until they are integrated into the system, ie like Hermes whom Zeus acknowledges and gives the job of messenger of the gods, and a god who can go into the underworld and, say, bring back Persephone. It was also interesting Chabon's claim that such mythological additions could reflect changes in society, ie that landed aristocracy/farmers had to make room for craftspeople and traders, reflected in the story where Apollo/Hermes becoming besties after Hermes tricked him.
5. Tricksters may be creative, and lustful, but that creativity is not reproductive. Instead tricksters, Coyote especially, are itinerant. They do not stay home and do what Beaver or Lion do; Coyote or Raven or Spider mimic others (sometimes to positive ends, sometimes not) and defy classification. See liminality again.
Even with all of the above established, there were so many current examples, too. He included John Cage and Maxine Hong Kinsgston in discussions around silence and the sacred/profane and how culture uses silence and shame to maintain order; Marcel Duchamp and Robert Maplethorpe and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" around the sacred and the profane and Levi-Strauss on signs and signified. Chabon talked at length about Frederick Douglass and outsider status and liminality (black and white, freed slave, etc etc)
All in all, whew, a whirlwind of a book. I really enjoyed it. It was certainly on the more academic end of the spectrum, but I was a fan.
Really, staggering. A few key takeaways:
1. Tricksters introduce concepts of hunger, which is frequently paired with death. (They eat something, thereby introducing death. See the case of Hermes stealing and eating Apollo's sacred cattle. Previously they were immortal?) Often, tricksters do not wholly indulge their hunger.
2. Tricksters are inventors and culture-creators (think Prometheus stealing fire; artifice is done by "art" which can imitate, and therefore "lie", about what something is). Tricksters travel so widely that they know that items take on different meanings depending on context (ie Homer's Odysseus travels so far from the sea that his oar is mistaken for a winnowing tool).
3. Tricksters cross the boundaries between the sacred and the profane (and life/death; in general they are just beings that dwell in the liminal, in the uncertain). The discussion around Mary Douglas' work on dirt -- being dependent on context -- was fascinating. Indeed, the Legba / Maya story about dishwater, and that Legba splashes dishwater on her causes Maya to leave the earth was very interesting. And in such tricky stories about a trickster's transgression is indeed how the trickster makes/reshapes the world around him to better suit him (or create a place for himself that didn't exist in the previous world)
4. ...and that is why tricksters often (initially) challenge the status quo until they are integrated into the system, ie like Hermes whom Zeus acknowledges and gives the job of messenger of the gods, and a god who can go into the underworld and, say, bring back Persephone. It was also interesting Chabon's claim that such mythological additions could reflect changes in society, ie that landed aristocracy/farmers had to make room for craftspeople and traders, reflected in the story where Apollo/Hermes becoming besties after Hermes tricked him.
5. Tricksters may be creative, and lustful, but that creativity is not reproductive. Instead tricksters, Coyote especially, are itinerant. They do not stay home and do what Beaver or Lion do; Coyote or Raven or Spider mimic others (sometimes to positive ends, sometimes not) and defy classification. See liminality again.
Even with all of the above established, there were so many current examples, too. He included John Cage and Maxine Hong Kinsgston in discussions around silence and the sacred/profane and how culture uses silence and shame to maintain order; Marcel Duchamp and Robert Maplethorpe and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" around the sacred and the profane and Levi-Strauss on signs and signified. Chabon talked at length about Frederick Douglass and outsider status and liminality (black and white, freed slave, etc etc)
All in all, whew, a whirlwind of a book. I really enjoyed it. It was certainly on the more academic end of the spectrum, but I was a fan.