Trickster Makes This World Mischief, Myth, and Art

"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 defence 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 heroes.In this fascinating book, Lewis Hyde explores the old myths that state that the trickster made the world as it actually is. He argues that our world, with its complexity and ambiguity, its beauty and its dirt, was trickster's creation, and the work is not yet finished.

"Hyde is one of our true superstars of non fiction" David Foster Wallace * 'Hyde is one of our true superstars of non fiction - this book not only covers its subject in more depth and comprehension than anything before (anything I've read, anyway) but it also ends up being about...well, everything. The guy's both brilliant (intellectually, literarily) and wise (psychologically, spiritually, you-name-itally). '-David Foster Wallace * '[Hyde] is one of those quirky, eccentric Wise Children the United States sometimes throws up - a sort of Thoreau-cum-anthropologist-cum-seer...[Trickster] should be read by anyone interested in the grand and squalid matter of all things human...A glorious grab-bag stuffed with necessary loot, a joyful plum pudding rich in treasures.' - Margaret Atwood, Los Angeles Times * 'Brilliant...By the time he is done he has folded language, culture, and the very habit of being human into his ken.' - The New Yorker"

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