The Gift

Ever read Lewis Hyde’s famous book The Gift? It’s in its twenty-fifth anniversary edition this year, and it’s still relevant to artists living and working in what continues to be our increasingly commercial market culture.  Hyde is a proponent for a creative commonwealth, of sharing and giving as an essential part of creation.  His ideas are radical for those who have invested heavily in a propertied culture, but they carry their own logic. Recently he’s been interviewed by KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt.  Have a listen.  It’s a great interview in which he talks about these ideas and what sorts of circumstances a young person needs in our current culture to become an artist of any sort, and what circumstances we’ve created that prohibit people from becoming artists.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s