Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture.

(Paperback, Main - Canons edition)

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Description

Trickster disrupted the world around him, and in doing so he reshaped it. Playful, mischievous, subversive, amoral, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but they are also indispensable heroes of culture.Trickster Makes This World revisits the stories of Coyote, Eshu and Hermes and holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Maxine Hong Kingston and others. Authoritative in its scholarship, supple and dynamic in its style, Trickster Makes This World encourages you to think and see afresh.

Reviews

This book is a revelation * * The Times * *
A modern classic . . . which celebrates the power of disruptive imagination * * Guardian * *
A glorious grab-bag stuffed with necessary loot, a joyful plum pudding rich in treasures -- Margaret Atwood * * Los Angeles Times * *
His big ideas are seriously good ones * * Guardian * *
An act of pure pleasure from first to last -- Michael Chabon
Hyde is one of our true superstars of non-fiction . . . Both brilliant (intellectually, literarily) and wise (psychologically, spiritually, you-name-itally) -- David Foster Wallace
Lewis Hyde's second masterpiece -- Margaret Atwood
A masterpiece . . . The thrilling thing about reading non-fiction such as Hyde's is not just that it gives you new thoughts: it also changes the way you think * * Scotland on Sunday * *
Brilliant...By the time he is done he has folded language, culture, and the very habit of being human into his ken * * The New Yorker * *
Hyde is far more than an astute cultural critic; he's an original and important thinker. Pass it on -- Geoff Dyer

Author Bio

Lewis Hyde was born in Boston and studied at the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa. In addition to Trickster Makes This World, he is the author of The Gift, a defence of the importance of creativity in our increasingly money-orientated society. A MacArthur Fellow and former Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, Hyde is currently the Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in Ohio.