The Gift
Ratings2
Average rating4.8
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.8
Starting with the premise that the work of art is a gift and not a commodity, this revolutionary book ranges across anthropology, literature, economics, and psychology to show how the 'commerce of the creative spirit' functions in the lives of artists and in culture as a whole.
Reviews with the most likes.
Wow.
I will be thinking about the bold ideas in this book for days and months and years.
Reading the opening sections of the book as Lewis lays out his concepts of gift exchange, market exchange, the way that they parallel logos and eros, and the exploitation and life draining that can happen when different modes of exchange are used inappropriately electrified me. It was like finding out the proper name to a geographic feature that you have always known, but did not know this history of. There are ideas I read that have been deeply held in my being without being able to recognize their name or their logic.
I did not follow most of the critical writing on Whitman and Pound.
It's also made me think a lot about the futility of wishing for a context and time that is more friendly to art, and the importance of finding the new structures to support and patronize art in the present. Like with a person, there is usually less of a point to wishing they were different than the hard work of finding a way to coexist with them.
