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Trickster Makes This World
First published 1997 · 432 pages
A playful and profound intellectual journey into how chaos, mischief, and boundary-crossing fuel human creativity.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting with a brilliant, slightly mischievous professor who connects the dots between ancient campfires and modern art studios. The pace is steady and deliberate, inviting you to linger over rich tapestries of folklore, anthropology, and cultural criticism. It possesses an intellectually expansive and wondrous mood, sparking constant moments of realization as it reveals how disruption and chaos are essential to creation. The prose is eloquent and deeply layered, weaving together the exploits of Hermes and Coyote with the subversive genius of Picasso and John Cage. It is a feast for the curious mind, delighting artists, writers, and anyone fascinated by the rule-breakers who reshape our cultural landscapes by refusing to stay within the lines.
- Mood
- intellectually stimulating
- wondrous
- contemplative
- mischievous
- Tone
- erudite
- playful
- inquisitive
- insightful
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- creative power of disruption · boundary-crossing · necessity of chaos · art as subversion · myth in modernity
- The writing
- Eloquent, deeply researched, and layered with metaphor, weaving complex academic concepts into engaging, accessible storytelling.
- The arc
- Moves from a curious exploration of ancient folklore to a profound, inspiring appreciation for the disruptive forces that drive human creativity.
- Who it's for
- Curious minds, artists, and cultural enthusiasts who love interdisciplinary deep-dives into mythology, philosophy, and the creative process.
Content notes
- mythological violence
- sexual references in folklore
About the book
Lewis Hyde's ambitious and captivating Trickster Makes This World brings to life the playful and disruptive side of the human imagination as it is embodied in the trickster mythology. Most at home on the road or at the twilight edge of town, tricksters are consummate boundary-crossers, slipping through keyholes, breaching walls, subverting defense systems.
Always out to satisfy their inordinate appetites, lying, cheating, and stealing, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but paradoxically they are also indispensable culture heroes.
In North America, Coyote taught the race how to dress, sing, and shoot arrows. In West Africa, Eshu discovered the art of divination so that suffering humans might know the purposes of heaven. In Greece, Hermes the Thief invented the art of sacrifice, the trick of making fire, and even language itself.
Hyde revisits these old stories, then holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frederick Douglass, and others.
Description from Open Library.
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