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A review by anonblueberry
Trickster Makes This World: How The Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture by Lewis Hyde
4.0
It's taken me about a year to read this, in part because it got packed up in a box while I was living elsewhere, and partly because Hyde doesn't have the most fluid writing style, at least not consistently.
This is an interesting book, and the analysis he provides on the multiple Trickster mythologies of the world are well thought out and well presented, although I'm not entirely sure how much is his work and how much is him re-presenting the work of others; there are an awful lot of pieces where he seems to solely discuss other interpretations and merely echoes what they have said or leaves them without comment.
I think what would have made the book a lot more interesting would have been less of the discussion of various artists and writers as trickster inspired figures, and more on the inspiration of the tricksters. The Douglass chapter especially seemed very forced and circular, never quite coming to the point that I think it was trying to make.
Overall an interesting book that fell slightly short of what I was hoping it would be, but certainly not one that I regret reading.
This is an interesting book, and the analysis he provides on the multiple Trickster mythologies of the world are well thought out and well presented, although I'm not entirely sure how much is his work and how much is him re-presenting the work of others; there are an awful lot of pieces where he seems to solely discuss other interpretations and merely echoes what they have said or leaves them without comment.
I think what would have made the book a lot more interesting would have been less of the discussion of various artists and writers as trickster inspired figures, and more on the inspiration of the tricksters. The Douglass chapter especially seemed very forced and circular, never quite coming to the point that I think it was trying to make.
Overall an interesting book that fell slightly short of what I was hoping it would be, but certainly not one that I regret reading.