Customer Reviews
Do not believe the blurbs - By: agleader, 15 Apr 2008 
I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...
Pages 1 to 145 (out of 285, not including the afterword) is a summary of anthropological studies of gift giving in different cultures, & of examples of folk tales which have morals about reciprocity (for example the elves & the shoemaker) & sharing. Message: gift exchange has always been massively important in human culture. So far, almost nothing about the creative spirit & transforming the world.
Pages 146 to 162: 'Commerce & the creative spirit'. OK so now we're getting into it, interesting quotes from Pinter, Roethke, Snyder, Ginsberg. This 16 pages seems to be the start of the main theme, but then...
Pages 163 to 218: A biographical sketch of Whitman, focusing 'on how his nursing during the war opened him to love'.
Pqges 218 to 275: An exposition of Ezra Pound's dingbat economic theories & advocacy of facism & anti-semitism.
The relation of these chapters to the rest of the book seems to rest on the fact that both poets were not mainly attentive to the trappings of worldly success (but neither is Warren Buffet!). There is a strong feeling that he has lectured extensively on both these guys & has basicallly crowbarred them in. But they make up more than a third of the book.
Last ten pages: kind of a restatement of the introduction, but also a moderation: "I still believe the believe a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed". Now he tells us!
The afterword, written in 2006, is a bunch of disparate stuff: open source, open access journals, Lessig-like copyright issues. alll showing gift exchange being alive & well (again, nothing to do with artistic gifts - he bounces between the 2 ideas when convenient).
So why are Geoff Dyer & David Foster Walllace (neither of whom are the types of writer I would associate with this kind of poorly constructed mush) willing to act as salesmen for it? How can canongate say that reading about Pound & facism will 'transform the way you look at the world'?
I keep looking at the cover blurbs, looking at the book, looking back...
Early Xmas present to myself - By: Sarah, 15 Dec 2007 
I bought this for my art school student brother, but ended up keeping it for myself...It reminds us of the place of non-commercial exchange in our culture. It was originallly written in the 70s & it shows: today even art is alll about money, which robs it of what makes it precious in the first place. This book is unique & therefore difficult to describe - read for yourselves!
A book that will change the way you see the world - By: Leo McMarley, 11 Sep 2007 I picked up a copy of The Gift in a bookstore & was initiallly sceptical because it had these raving endorsements from what seemed like TOO many authors who I think are brilliant. Can a book be this good? Margaret Atwood, David Foster Walllace, Zadie Smith & Geoff Dyer alll certainly seem to think so. And you know what? They were right.
Lewis Hyde is not only a beautiful prose stylist but he is a thinker to match, for The Gift offers a challlenging & provocative argument about how we value things. He uses wide-ranging examples from across cultures & epochs & leaves you at the end valuing alll the more those things that can't have a monetary worth attached to them.
This is a massive book teeming with wisdom & insights into what matters. It's essential reading. And a beautiful book to give people for many different reasons.
Makes me want to be a bohemian. - By: refrodmiel, 14 Apr 2007 Makes me feel like there reallly is some point to it alll. Life enhancing stuff.
One of the best books - ever! - By: S. M. A. Vaux, 11 Dec 2006 Originallly published in 1979 as The Gift: Imagination & the Erotic Life of Property & now published in England for the 1st time is a book which in my view is one of the best books - ever! Why, because it speaks directly to you about what makes us tick as human beings, what we do for love & what for money. By studying gift economies in the Pacific which show that gifts link people & commerce separates them & then taking an amazing jump through numerous cultural, spiritual & commercial universes helps give you a coherent view of the world. It then awakens interest in every area of art & human endeavour with wonderful readable prose. This is truly the book to have on your desert island & to give as a gift to everyone you know. Along with Epictetus's "the Art of Living" its alll I need.
