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The Gift
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The Gift : How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World

 3.96 (2,697 ratings by Goodreads)
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Description

The Gift brilliantly argues for the importance of creativity in our increasingly money-driven society. Reaching deep into literature, anthropology and psychology Lewis Hyde's modern masterpiece has at its heart the simple and important idea that a 'gift' can inspire and change our lives.
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Product details

  • Paperback | 384 pages
  • 129 x 198 x 22mm | 281g
  • Canongate Canons
  • Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • English
  • Main - Canons Imprint Re-issue
  • No
  • 9780857868473
  • 7,551

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  1. Categories:
  2. Art Books
  3. Literary Studies: General
  4. Philosophy
  5. Society & Social Sciences
  6. Social & Cultural Anthropology

Review Text

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. It gets at the core of their dilemma: how to maintain yourself alive in a world of money, when the essential part of what you do cannot be bought or sold Margaret Atwood
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Review quote

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. It gets at the core of their dilemma: how to maintain yourself alive in a world of money, when the essential part of what you do cannot be bought or sold -- Margaret Atwood Reminds us of our cultural gifts and our responsibilities to them . . . a manifesto of sorts . . . In a climate where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing, Lewis Hyde offers us an account of those few, essential aspects of human experience that transcend commodity, or that will do so, if you let them -- Zadie Smith Helpful, beautiful and profound. It will change the way you look at everything * * Independent on Sunday * * Buy several copies for yourself and the rest of your friends interested in, well, anything . . . Hyde is far more than an astute cultural critic; he's an original and important thinker. Pass it on -- Geoff Dyer Few books are such life-changers as THE GIFT -- Jonathan Lethem Tiger balm for tired minds * * Sunday Times * * 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 * * Independent on Sunday * * Brilliant - by the time he is done he has folded language, culture and the very habit of being human into his ken * * New Yorker * * This wonderful, erudite and quirky book is a way of re-establishing a link with our imaginative life -- Jeanette Winterson
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About Lewis Hyde

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 kind of disruptive imagination that 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's most recent book is Common as Air, a stirring defence of our cultural commons, that vast store of art and ideas we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present.

A MacArthur Fellow and former Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, Hyde is currently the Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in Ohio.
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Rating details

2,697 ratings
3.96 out of 5 stars
5 39% (1,042)
4 31% (838)
3 20% (538)
2 8% (216)
1 2% (63)
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