At Smith Family Books in Eugene, Oregon a few weeks ago I found a used copy of Lewis Hyde's 1983 book The Gift, which I learned about last year from a profile of Hyde in the Sunday Times magazine. Since then the ideas of the book have taken root in my head, and I knew that someday I would read it. Of course I could have bought The Gift online as soon as I learned about it, but it seems more appropriate that I found it casually. This made it a quasi-gift; I paid for the book, but it only arrived at that bookstore after passing through other hands.
Hyde passionately defends the transformative power of the arts in our market-based economy, arguing that art is best understood as a gift rather than a commodity. Once something creative and unique is sold, part of its spirit is lost. Obviously artists need to make a living and put a roof over their heads; Hyde is not a utopian absolutist. But if we commoditize art too much--to the point of developing formulas for novels and films that are mere replicas of what has come before--we've degraded art and created well-compensated trash. This doesn't mean that all works of art must be inaccessible or pretentious, but they should be honest and full of feeling.
Why is a art a gift? Because, at its purest, it is offered with no expectation of financial return. The artist could give away books for free, and make a living giving lectures or working on translations. (This is highly unrealistic, of course, but that's because we live in a society with an insufficient appreciation for original art.) Art is also a gift because it extends outward from the artist in an arc that should always expand.
For example, if something I write resonates with someone else, they might run with it and write, draw, sculpt, paint, dance, or paper mache something of their own. And then someone else will pick up on that, and so on and so forth. Hyde ingeniously weaves a great deal of cultural anthropology about the steady functioning of "gift economies" around the world--with detours among the Maori, the Krakiutl Native American tribe, and the Kula, among others--to make his case.
This all sounds namby-pamby and naive, I know. But in reality all culture builds on what came before it, which is why our draconian copyright terms--which currently extends to 70 years after the death of an author!--are an unbelievable shame. (I am not calling for an abolition of copyright, just for much more reasonable terms that permit cultural re-use.) Lewis Hyde agrees with me, which is why he is currently at work on a robust defense of the "cultural commons." (I recall Jonathan Lethem's brilliant essay from Harper's a few years ago, "The Ecstacy of Influence," in which every single reference in his fully-formed piece derives from something that came before.) There is no doubt that Hyde's latest effort will be brilliant, but I fear that it won't staunch the momentum of a "free market" that is currently geared to make its artists ever less free.
Why do I like Lewis Hyde so much? Because he's been a source of strength to writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace. Because he teaches writing at Kenyon College, and I could have gone there. Because he offers a robust and urbane defense of causes like open access publishing and institutions like the Creative Commons. And, most importantly, because he offers compelling answers to the ever-shortsighted question of why anyone would want to study the humanities.
We're mostly animals, but what distinguishes us from the apes (perhaps) is our ability to create and appreciate art. So the study of humanities is the study of ourselves--and hopefully we'll never cross completely over into thinking of ourselves as commodities. If we do make that fateful step, we can't say that Lewis Hyde didn't warn us.
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