Trickster Makes This World
Mischief, Myth, and Art
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first visits the old stories—Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others—and then holds them up against the lives and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Twelve years after its first publication, Trickster Makes This World—authoritative in its scholarship, loose-limbed in its style—has taken its place among the great works of modern cultural criticism.
This new edition includes an introduction by Michael Chabon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Invoking examples from trickster mythologies around the world, poet and essayist Hyde (The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property) asserts that trickster figures, in ancient and modern times, "keep our world lively and give it the flexibility to endure." The trickster is "the creative idiot, the wise fool, the grey-haired baby, the cross-dresser"; in Native American myth, he's Coyote and Raven; in India he's Krishna; in West Africa he's Eshu; in China he's the Monkey King; and in Europe he's the Greek Hermes and the Norse Loki. For Hyde, he embodies the disruptive imagination that inspires modern artists like Pablo Picasso, John Cage, and Marcel Duchamp, encourages "border crossers" like Frederick Douglass and "unties the tongues" of writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Allen Ginsburg. Hyde begins the book with a little wink ("The first story I have to tell is not exactly true, but it isn't exactly false, either") and clearly fancies himself a bit of a trickster, but he rarely takes readers by surprise. He politely retraces his argument in each section, taking us through all his impeccable and fascinating research. Though his thesis lacks urgency, Hyde's etymological flourishes, his charming translation of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and his wonderful collection of epigraphs along with the lusty exploits of Coyote will keep the general reader on his toes.
