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Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art
Trickster Makes This World solidifies Lewis Hyde's reputation as, in Robert Bly's words, "the most subtle, thorough, and brilliant mythologist we now have." In it, Hyde now brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first revisits the old stories--Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others--and then holds them up against the life and work of more recent Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Authoritative in its scholarship, loose-limbed in its style, Trickster Makes This World ranks among the great works of modern cultural criticism.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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January 12, 2011
This is the sorta book you always wish you were able to write. It's thick, learned, full of digressions and personal asides, and the dude even translates the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (say it fast, I dare ya) out of Greek himself. I doubt it's for everyone. The pace can be a tad pokey; I recommend reading a chapter at a time and then setting the tome aside for a bit. Also, I suspect some of the personal stories can come off as self-indulgent. And let's face it, Hyde is an academic, though this book is only theoretical when the doc rolls up his sleeves and starts getting signifiggy with it with MC Umberto Eco and DJ Jazzy Jung. Folks cool with those tics may object to the cross-cultural synthesis, which seeks out parallels between Greek, Native American, and African-Am (Zulu!) trickster stories---today most culturographers (to create my own school of criticism) emphasize differences and dichotomies.
All these equivocations aside, I still say it's a fascinating, educational read. I'm a huge fan of Hyde's earlier book THE GIFT, even though the style in that one is probaby even more off-putting. Each chapter seizes upon a certain trait of tricksters (hunger, lying) or an image associated with them (threshholds) and explores the imaginative implications. The point ultimately is to explore how resonant trickster figures are for a culture: they represent the "disruptive imagination" that inverts, erases, and overturns conventional wisdoms. Hyde then seeks to illustrate these characteristics with what might strike some as a fairly random sample of modern examples. It's hard for me to think of another work that invokes Marcel Duchamp and Frederick Douglass or John Cage and Claude Levi-Strauss in the same breath. Sometimes the assertions can be a little fuzzy; I'm still trying to figure out the reading of Douglass. In other cases (Ginsberg) it's almost a little too easy to view them as Hermes types. Still, for those who have the patience, Trickster is like following a brilliant mind make synaptic connections. Again, it's the type of book it would be fun to try if one had the reputation that Lewis Hyde does. And, in an age of PowerPoint listcicles, it's refreshing to jump into something loose and baggy. It gives one's brain its own room to breathe.
All these equivocations aside, I still say it's a fascinating, educational read. I'm a huge fan of Hyde's earlier book THE GIFT, even though the style in that one is probaby even more off-putting. Each chapter seizes upon a certain trait of tricksters (hunger, lying) or an image associated with them (threshholds) and explores the imaginative implications. The point ultimately is to explore how resonant trickster figures are for a culture: they represent the "disruptive imagination" that inverts, erases, and overturns conventional wisdoms. Hyde then seeks to illustrate these characteristics with what might strike some as a fairly random sample of modern examples. It's hard for me to think of another work that invokes Marcel Duchamp and Frederick Douglass or John Cage and Claude Levi-Strauss in the same breath. Sometimes the assertions can be a little fuzzy; I'm still trying to figure out the reading of Douglass. In other cases (Ginsberg) it's almost a little too easy to view them as Hermes types. Still, for those who have the patience, Trickster is like following a brilliant mind make synaptic connections. Again, it's the type of book it would be fun to try if one had the reputation that Lewis Hyde does. And, in an age of PowerPoint listcicles, it's refreshing to jump into something loose and baggy. It gives one's brain its own room to breathe.
July 1, 2021
Tricksters are on the road. They are in-between.
Tricksters are change-agents who both disrupt and create.
Tricksters are always looking for the door.
Tricksters break artificial restrictions.
This is a fantastic but not entirely trustworthy book. It is thoughtful and thought-provoking. I didn't agree with all his conclusions or inclusions, but I enjoyed considering them and got something out of even the parts I disagreed with.
You'll also probably find some unfamiliar myths and texts to research further.
Highly recommended. Read with an open but critical mind.
Tricksters are change-agents who both disrupt and create.
Tricksters are always looking for the door.
Tricksters break artificial restrictions.
This is a fantastic but not entirely trustworthy book. It is thoughtful and thought-provoking. I didn't agree with all his conclusions or inclusions, but I enjoyed considering them and got something out of even the parts I disagreed with.
You'll also probably find some unfamiliar myths and texts to research further.
Highly recommended. Read with an open but critical mind.
May 1, 2009
If Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon haven't read this book and borrowed concepts liberally, then they are operating in a parallel universe, mining the same sources. It's a rich and deep vein.
Hyde rambles through the many ways Trickster figures influence human thought and action. The idea of the disruptive as necessary, even sacred, to life, has wide distribution. "...the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on."
Even though many of the Trickster figures were familiar to me--Raven, Coyote, Monkey, Hermes--others were not--Loki, Eshu, Legba--and Hyde makes connections that reveal layers I hadn't known or seen. He also discusses how mythology becomes reality, as humans themselves become shape-shifters, re-aligning the context of their work and their lives, and changing their society/culture in the process. I particularly enjoyed reading about the motivations and working methods of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, and as a result will always look at their work and lives in an entirely different way. The section on Frederick Douglass also gave me a fuller and more nuanced insight into his influence and life.
"If we think the ideal is real we are seriously mistaken."
Life is messy. Try to control it too tightly and it will burst. Better to laugh and occasionally let Trickster have his way.
Hyde rambles through the many ways Trickster figures influence human thought and action. The idea of the disruptive as necessary, even sacred, to life, has wide distribution. "...the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on."
Even though many of the Trickster figures were familiar to me--Raven, Coyote, Monkey, Hermes--others were not--Loki, Eshu, Legba--and Hyde makes connections that reveal layers I hadn't known or seen. He also discusses how mythology becomes reality, as humans themselves become shape-shifters, re-aligning the context of their work and their lives, and changing their society/culture in the process. I particularly enjoyed reading about the motivations and working methods of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, and as a result will always look at their work and lives in an entirely different way. The section on Frederick Douglass also gave me a fuller and more nuanced insight into his influence and life.
"If we think the ideal is real we are seriously mistaken."
Life is messy. Try to control it too tightly and it will burst. Better to laugh and occasionally let Trickster have his way.
August 13, 2023
This is a non-fic, which uses Freud and Jung's approaches to human unconsciousness to outline the figure of trickster both in old works (Greek myths about Hermes, Native American stories about Coyote and African Legba and Eshu among others) and in recent history, e.g. discussing the life and writings of Frederick Douglass and Allen Ginsberg. It should be noted that the concept of the trickster figure relates to creativity, art, and transformation, and not just stealing or conniving.
There are four parts and twelve chapters. Each part (starting with Part One: Trap of Nature) discusses separate aspects of the trickster, his (there is an appendix, where the author discusses why most trickster figures are male) urges – an appetite for life, from food to sex, and both the cases of succumbing to his own lusts and using free will to avoid them. So, for example, Hermes steals Apollos’ cows, but doesn’t eat them, in order to be finally accepted to the Olympians.
Before Hermes each god[dess] perfected her/his sphere, perfect order but no progress. The trickster breaks societal norms and conventions in order to challenge the established order and bring about change, disrupting fixed structures with their transformative power.
The author stresses fluidity of tricksters, their symbol is a road and crossroads, not a place, but a change of place. Tricksters use deception and manipulation to challenge conventional truths and reveal hidden layers of reality, not only with lies but with truth, which are hidden, like is a story of Eshu, who rode between two friends in a hat that was black on one side and white on the other. Both friends saw only one side of the hat and it came to blows when each stressed his own truth and (assumed) wrongness of the other.
This chapter examines the trickster's relationship with craftsmanship and artistry. Hyde discusses how tricksters often possess skills that blur the line between the sacred and the profane, challenging societal notions of value and worth. He highlights the tension between societal expectations and the artist's need to challenge norms in pursuit of authentic expression by discussing a case in 1989 of a traveling exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs—including graphic images of homosexual sadomasochism at the gallery of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center. The day after the exhibit was opened, sheriff’s deputies raided the show, videotaped seven of the photographs, and then got a grand jury to indict the gallery on obscenity charges. The defense presented a row of renowned critics and art experts, each of whom stressed that it was art. “Art” and “obscenity” are distinct categories, the law says—and on these grounds, the jury deferred to the critics and voted to acquit. One juror, the manager of a warehouse, explained the decision: “All of them [the experts], to a person, were so certain it was art. We had to go with what we were told. It’s like Picasso. Picasso from what everybody tells me was an artist. It’s not my cup of tea. I don’t understand it. But if people say it’s art, then I have to go along with it.” Art brings change, a trickster business.
A very interesting book, even if I don’t agree with every interpretation in it, it was a lot of new info and food for thought.
There are four parts and twelve chapters. Each part (starting with Part One: Trap of Nature) discusses separate aspects of the trickster, his (there is an appendix, where the author discusses why most trickster figures are male) urges – an appetite for life, from food to sex, and both the cases of succumbing to his own lusts and using free will to avoid them. So, for example, Hermes steals Apollos’ cows, but doesn’t eat them, in order to be finally accepted to the Olympians.
Before Hermes each god[dess] perfected her/his sphere, perfect order but no progress. The trickster breaks societal norms and conventions in order to challenge the established order and bring about change, disrupting fixed structures with their transformative power.
The author stresses fluidity of tricksters, their symbol is a road and crossroads, not a place, but a change of place. Tricksters use deception and manipulation to challenge conventional truths and reveal hidden layers of reality, not only with lies but with truth, which are hidden, like is a story of Eshu, who rode between two friends in a hat that was black on one side and white on the other. Both friends saw only one side of the hat and it came to blows when each stressed his own truth and (assumed) wrongness of the other.
This chapter examines the trickster's relationship with craftsmanship and artistry. Hyde discusses how tricksters often possess skills that blur the line between the sacred and the profane, challenging societal notions of value and worth. He highlights the tension between societal expectations and the artist's need to challenge norms in pursuit of authentic expression by discussing a case in 1989 of a traveling exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs—including graphic images of homosexual sadomasochism at the gallery of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center. The day after the exhibit was opened, sheriff’s deputies raided the show, videotaped seven of the photographs, and then got a grand jury to indict the gallery on obscenity charges. The defense presented a row of renowned critics and art experts, each of whom stressed that it was art. “Art” and “obscenity” are distinct categories, the law says—and on these grounds, the jury deferred to the critics and voted to acquit. One juror, the manager of a warehouse, explained the decision: “All of them [the experts], to a person, were so certain it was art. We had to go with what we were told. It’s like Picasso. Picasso from what everybody tells me was an artist. It’s not my cup of tea. I don’t understand it. But if people say it’s art, then I have to go along with it.” Art brings change, a trickster business.
A very interesting book, even if I don’t agree with every interpretation in it, it was a lot of new info and food for thought.
May 6, 2013
The power of this book, for artists, is the overwhelming evidence of our descent from a being more than human, less than divine - one who inhabits the crossroads, crosses boundaries, works the joints, sees more and risks all.
September 2, 2016
Hyde's interpretive framework for trickster mythology is structured more or less as follows:
Gods & Heaven = societal hegemony / capitalists / wealthy 1% / status quo
Trickster = liminal, generative force (culture / ideology) disruptive to status quo
Humans & Earth = subaltern / marginalized / labor / 99% / beneficiaries of trickster mediation
It's a simple, serviceable analytical rubric applied toward some decent comparative mythology ('trickster genealogy') whereby he establishes elements of his own awkward critical lexicon ('dirt-work', 'finding pores', 'two-way chance', etc) the likes of which are then employed in various associative forays with the work of avant-garde artists like John Cage and the life of Frederick Douglass.
Mythological affinities among disparate peoples being the stuff of grade-school introductory surveys, the basic pattern-recognition MO of Hyde's trickster genealogy not only wears itself out early on, it also suffers—due to its fundamentally prescriptive nature—from egregious selective bias and oversimplification (Hyde, to his credit, readily acknowledges both). Nor is he aided by a muddled and needlessly protracted thesis (put simply: tricksters generate culture by disrupting the status quo) which could've easily been consolidated into half the page count by omitting much indulgent, reiterative rhetorical fluff and foregrounding his finer points with more concise headings like, say, 'Rejuvenation From Destruction' and 'The Function of the Avant Garde' instead of his terribly clunky organizational wordplay ('Shameless Speech and Speechless Shame' or 'Change the Rap and Slip the Trap' etc).
I admire the thrust of Hyde's project, his enthusiasm for the material, and especially his implications to disrupt, hack, culture-jam, re-engineer, backfire, reappropriate, wreak havoc, dirty, overthrow, subvert, transgress etc (I was often reminded of the late Saul Alinsky who dedicated his Rules For Radicals to lucifer). I'm also certain there is an ingenious long-form essay to be culled from all the gluttonous intellectual bloat found herein. But as it is—Hyde making increasingly desperate, overcrowded associative reaches while also becoming somehow more predictable with each expository gesture (ie. when Hyde writes 'To place these reflections on Hermes and Frederick Douglass in the larger frame of my project...' there is finally no denying his painful overestimation of the complexity of his premise)—TMTW is so wildly overfed, redundant and heavy-handed that whatever potency might've survived in a tightly crafted essay form is sadly diffused into tedium here.
+ I was pretty turned off when he borrowed from Foucault ("All social structures do well to anchor their rules of conduct in the seemingly simple inscription of the body...") without proper credit :(
Gods & Heaven = societal hegemony / capitalists / wealthy 1% / status quo
Trickster = liminal, generative force (culture / ideology) disruptive to status quo
Humans & Earth = subaltern / marginalized / labor / 99% / beneficiaries of trickster mediation
It's a simple, serviceable analytical rubric applied toward some decent comparative mythology ('trickster genealogy') whereby he establishes elements of his own awkward critical lexicon ('dirt-work', 'finding pores', 'two-way chance', etc) the likes of which are then employed in various associative forays with the work of avant-garde artists like John Cage and the life of Frederick Douglass.
Mythological affinities among disparate peoples being the stuff of grade-school introductory surveys, the basic pattern-recognition MO of Hyde's trickster genealogy not only wears itself out early on, it also suffers—due to its fundamentally prescriptive nature—from egregious selective bias and oversimplification (Hyde, to his credit, readily acknowledges both). Nor is he aided by a muddled and needlessly protracted thesis (put simply: tricksters generate culture by disrupting the status quo) which could've easily been consolidated into half the page count by omitting much indulgent, reiterative rhetorical fluff and foregrounding his finer points with more concise headings like, say, 'Rejuvenation From Destruction' and 'The Function of the Avant Garde' instead of his terribly clunky organizational wordplay ('Shameless Speech and Speechless Shame' or 'Change the Rap and Slip the Trap' etc).
I admire the thrust of Hyde's project, his enthusiasm for the material, and especially his implications to disrupt, hack, culture-jam, re-engineer, backfire, reappropriate, wreak havoc, dirty, overthrow, subvert, transgress etc (I was often reminded of the late Saul Alinsky who dedicated his Rules For Radicals to lucifer). I'm also certain there is an ingenious long-form essay to be culled from all the gluttonous intellectual bloat found herein. But as it is—Hyde making increasingly desperate, overcrowded associative reaches while also becoming somehow more predictable with each expository gesture (ie. when Hyde writes 'To place these reflections on Hermes and Frederick Douglass in the larger frame of my project...' there is finally no denying his painful overestimation of the complexity of his premise)—TMTW is so wildly overfed, redundant and heavy-handed that whatever potency might've survived in a tightly crafted essay form is sadly diffused into tedium here.
+ I was pretty turned off when he borrowed from Foucault ("All social structures do well to anchor their rules of conduct in the seemingly simple inscription of the body...") without proper credit :(
July 7, 2017
I find it hard to categorise this book. It certainly is not quite what i expected it to be. Highly intellectual - a cross between analysing folk stories, philosophy of art and creativity - all around the concept of the trickster. I also can't work out if it is profound or merely very clever. But it's certainly interesting.
From the start of the book it jumps into intellectual deep waters, there is no gentle introduction. Don't take the cover blurb about modern creators/artists too seriously. They are mentioned and analysed but to a much lesser degree that characters from different cultures folk stories who all exhibit being a trickster.
It took me quite a while to get into the book but overall I enjoyed it. It now sits in my intellectual oddities pile.
From the start of the book it jumps into intellectual deep waters, there is no gentle introduction. Don't take the cover blurb about modern creators/artists too seriously. They are mentioned and analysed but to a much lesser degree that characters from different cultures folk stories who all exhibit being a trickster.
It took me quite a while to get into the book but overall I enjoyed it. It now sits in my intellectual oddities pile.
December 17, 2016
Hermes was born in the morning, and by the evening, he was hungry for steak. (Such is the growth of god, you know.) So he sneaks out the house and steals the cows that belong to Apollo (his half brother).
Even though Hermes uses various tricks to cover up his crime, like forcing the cows to walk backwards, Apollo figures it out soon enough and storms to the cave Hermes lives with his mother. He demands Hermes to return the cows, or he'd send him to the underworld. (In other words, he'd kill him.) To this, little Hermes says, "Why do you bully on me, big brother? I didn't steal your cows. Do I look like a tough cowboy? I was born yesterday. I've never left this place. I don't even know what a cow looks like. Blah, blah, blah . . ."
Amazingly, they come to terms. Not only that, they become friends, and Apollo swears he'd love Hermes above all other gods. (It should be noted that tricksters are not just blatant liars like, say, politicians, or loser type criminals. Tricksters are smart, charming, and often bring good lucks.)
This doesn't happen in the dualistic "you are either good or evil," and "you are either my friend or foe" value system. This book is a great guide to the dynamic ways tricksters like Hermes work, breaking the static order of things and brining fresh changes. Hyde covers wide variety of world mythologies, from ancient Greek to old Africa, native Americans, etc.
He is insightful, too. For example, take the above story and assume Hermes was a local resident. Outside, there was a land which didn't specifically belong to anyone before, but recently, some new people had arrived and started farming. One day, hungry "Hermes" goes there and takes a cow. Is that a theft? By the logic of newly settling people, yes. However, when "Hermes" caught a rabbit in the same area before, it was okay. What's the difference? Is it possible that the settlers stole land from the unsuspecting residents?
Tricksters prompt us to review our values, not in order to reverse any situation but to bring further definitions. I think we want to pay more respect to tricksters.
I took one star off because I think the organization of the book can be greatly improved. Also, his application of the trickster archetype to real life figures (etc) feels forced.
Even though Hermes uses various tricks to cover up his crime, like forcing the cows to walk backwards, Apollo figures it out soon enough and storms to the cave Hermes lives with his mother. He demands Hermes to return the cows, or he'd send him to the underworld. (In other words, he'd kill him.) To this, little Hermes says, "Why do you bully on me, big brother? I didn't steal your cows. Do I look like a tough cowboy? I was born yesterday. I've never left this place. I don't even know what a cow looks like. Blah, blah, blah . . ."
Amazingly, they come to terms. Not only that, they become friends, and Apollo swears he'd love Hermes above all other gods. (It should be noted that tricksters are not just blatant liars like, say, politicians, or loser type criminals. Tricksters are smart, charming, and often bring good lucks.)
This doesn't happen in the dualistic "you are either good or evil," and "you are either my friend or foe" value system. This book is a great guide to the dynamic ways tricksters like Hermes work, breaking the static order of things and brining fresh changes. Hyde covers wide variety of world mythologies, from ancient Greek to old Africa, native Americans, etc.
He is insightful, too. For example, take the above story and assume Hermes was a local resident. Outside, there was a land which didn't specifically belong to anyone before, but recently, some new people had arrived and started farming. One day, hungry "Hermes" goes there and takes a cow. Is that a theft? By the logic of newly settling people, yes. However, when "Hermes" caught a rabbit in the same area before, it was okay. What's the difference? Is it possible that the settlers stole land from the unsuspecting residents?
Tricksters prompt us to review our values, not in order to reverse any situation but to bring further definitions. I think we want to pay more respect to tricksters.
I took one star off because I think the organization of the book can be greatly improved. Also, his application of the trickster archetype to real life figures (etc) feels forced.
April 10, 2017
Very slow read not because it bored me but because it freaked me out. Had to take a break in between chapters... Powerful, good stuff.
"They're all the same, these tricksters; they have no shame and so they have no silence." (p. 153)
Larouê! Exú
"They're all the same, these tricksters; they have no shame and so they have no silence." (p. 153)
Larouê! Exú
July 7, 2021
Skimmed it because I had to return it.
Made my brain hurt.
Reread in future.
Made my brain hurt.
Reread in future.
May 11, 2020
Very cool examination of the Trickster figure in various cultures and the similar functions his myths serve, and how he’s like the father of imagination! Woohoo!
Was definitely one of those galaxy brain books that starts one place, seems to get pretty abstract, and then brings it all home and you’re like WooooOOOaaaAAAhhhh!!
Highlights included learning about weird rituals like the medieval festival of fools where people would invade the church dressed in drag, or in grotesque masks, and drink and sing and dance around to gross songs.
As well as discussion of how tricksters can both inspire a challenge to the social order, and be a way to maintain it, his stories/traditions serving as a safety valve for dissent, mocking (festival of fools!).
The comparisons of modern artists to tricksters doesn’t completely avoid cliché but there is a suuuuper interesting exploration of Frederick Douglas, and the discussion of the public reaction to Robert Mapplethorpe’s Homoerotic/graphic photography VS. public reaction to Piss Christ, is useful as well.
By the end Hyde, does sorta start to repeat him self a bit, and even tho it’s only about 300 pages, probably still coulda cut 50 or so. Still, very worth it!
Was definitely one of those galaxy brain books that starts one place, seems to get pretty abstract, and then brings it all home and you’re like WooooOOOaaaAAAhhhh!!
Highlights included learning about weird rituals like the medieval festival of fools where people would invade the church dressed in drag, or in grotesque masks, and drink and sing and dance around to gross songs.
As well as discussion of how tricksters can both inspire a challenge to the social order, and be a way to maintain it, his stories/traditions serving as a safety valve for dissent, mocking (festival of fools!).
The comparisons of modern artists to tricksters doesn’t completely avoid cliché but there is a suuuuper interesting exploration of Frederick Douglas, and the discussion of the public reaction to Robert Mapplethorpe’s Homoerotic/graphic photography VS. public reaction to Piss Christ, is useful as well.
By the end Hyde, does sorta start to repeat him self a bit, and even tho it’s only about 300 pages, probably still coulda cut 50 or so. Still, very worth it!
February 21, 2025
"Trickster stories are radically anti-idealist; they are made in and for a world of imperfections."
A book that's going to sit with me for a long, long time (maybe forever). I don't know if I agree with every finer detail of Hyde's love letter to the trickster, but I would say I agree with about 90% of it, and that is an awful lot for a work of philosophy. The trickster ever-wanders the borderlands; between life and death, order and disorder, always flirting with the upper limits of those taboos that must be broken, trying to play the game with the rules other people set to live another day.
For people who feel like they live in a constant state of "neither-this-nor-that", the territory of the terminally weird, Hyde's book feels a little like the closest thing I come to being philosphically home. Sometimes I feel my only commitment is to contrarianism. Any time I try to pin myself to something, I find myself magnetically drawn to pointing out and unraveling its contradictions and imagining how some New Thing, Better This Time could be configured from the ashes. As soon as I think I've grasped it, I'm on to a New Thing, a new set of contradictions. I'm not talking about, so much, a mode of behavior I maintain (though maybe that, a bit, too) but a consistency of thought; any time I think I have found a box that can, if imperfectly, contain me, I feel my hand reaching for the philosophical hammer.
Well, that's all very poignant of me, but sometimes a box is a useful thing, and any good trickster is not above using the rules to further their goals. This, too, is woven in Hyde's narrative; not only the desire to live rather than matyr oneself (perhaps one of the defining qualities of Hermes as opposed to some other tricksters of the West) but also the beauty of life itself; the fact that, as much as it hurts, pain and death and suffering are the cost of a world that does not live in terminal stasis, a kind of death that results from lack of anything to define itself. Trickster unleashes both good and evil into the world because pain is the cost of being alive, and it is better to be alive than dead, even if to be dead is to be deathless.
Although it's clear Hyde has a special affection for Hermes (girl, same) he's good about inclusivity and speaks at length on trickster spirits from all over the world from east to west.
I do have one big beef, though! Hyde basically posits that there's no such thing as a female trickster. I think his evidence for this is pretty thin. He in fact gives quite a great concession to his opposition in saying that the reasons could be highly related to patriarchy, both in which tricksters manage to survive to be written down in a patriarchal society, in for example original transcription in the case of Hellenic or Asian legends, and in who is being told the stories and transcribing them in the case of Native American and Norse stories that often prefigured writing (Men.) He makes a few nods to other reasoning, though, the two biggest of which are: A) women can become pregnant, and this makes it harder for them to take on the sexual promiscuity of trickster and B) Most female trickster adjacent figures are not culture heroes. He then undermines his own argument in the former case with the tale of Baubo's exposing her genitals (to crack up the goddess) as a key part of the Demeter myth, causing a respite from winter (a VERY cool bit of myth I did NOT know about) and the shockingly similar tale of Ame-no-Uzume--this one I did know about--where she does the same to end the darkness by luring Amaterasu out of a cave. It's especially egregious because in the latter case, Ame-no-Uzume is a culture hero, as she is the progenitor of Kagura dance and a cultural goddess of comedy and humor as well as the progenitor of the Sarume clan. She is, basically along all of Hyde's rubric, a proper trickster. It also frankly ignores the long cultural history of women as archetypes in bawdy stories, often notably post-menopausal, dating from the Baubo myth above to the Wife of Bath all the way to the venerable Nanny Ogg of Terry Prachett. Mostly what Hyde's long sidebar of torturously trying to convince people female tricksters aren't a thing does is convince me that they were a thing that are not well documented or understood in religious/mythological studies. Also it made me want to read Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods, though I kind of wish it was about more than just Baba Yaga. Hopefully it can lead me to the origins of other feminine tricksers along the way.
Okay, that rant aside--a really wonderful book that talks about a lot of things that define my approach to, well, existence. I loved this book so much.
A book that's going to sit with me for a long, long time (maybe forever). I don't know if I agree with every finer detail of Hyde's love letter to the trickster, but I would say I agree with about 90% of it, and that is an awful lot for a work of philosophy. The trickster ever-wanders the borderlands; between life and death, order and disorder, always flirting with the upper limits of those taboos that must be broken, trying to play the game with the rules other people set to live another day.
For people who feel like they live in a constant state of "neither-this-nor-that", the territory of the terminally weird, Hyde's book feels a little like the closest thing I come to being philosphically home. Sometimes I feel my only commitment is to contrarianism. Any time I try to pin myself to something, I find myself magnetically drawn to pointing out and unraveling its contradictions and imagining how some New Thing, Better This Time could be configured from the ashes. As soon as I think I've grasped it, I'm on to a New Thing, a new set of contradictions. I'm not talking about, so much, a mode of behavior I maintain (though maybe that, a bit, too) but a consistency of thought; any time I think I have found a box that can, if imperfectly, contain me, I feel my hand reaching for the philosophical hammer.
Well, that's all very poignant of me, but sometimes a box is a useful thing, and any good trickster is not above using the rules to further their goals. This, too, is woven in Hyde's narrative; not only the desire to live rather than matyr oneself (perhaps one of the defining qualities of Hermes as opposed to some other tricksters of the West) but also the beauty of life itself; the fact that, as much as it hurts, pain and death and suffering are the cost of a world that does not live in terminal stasis, a kind of death that results from lack of anything to define itself. Trickster unleashes both good and evil into the world because pain is the cost of being alive, and it is better to be alive than dead, even if to be dead is to be deathless.
Although it's clear Hyde has a special affection for Hermes (girl, same) he's good about inclusivity and speaks at length on trickster spirits from all over the world from east to west.
I do have one big beef, though! Hyde basically posits that there's no such thing as a female trickster. I think his evidence for this is pretty thin. He in fact gives quite a great concession to his opposition in saying that the reasons could be highly related to patriarchy, both in which tricksters manage to survive to be written down in a patriarchal society, in for example original transcription in the case of Hellenic or Asian legends, and in who is being told the stories and transcribing them in the case of Native American and Norse stories that often prefigured writing (Men.) He makes a few nods to other reasoning, though, the two biggest of which are: A) women can become pregnant, and this makes it harder for them to take on the sexual promiscuity of trickster and B) Most female trickster adjacent figures are not culture heroes. He then undermines his own argument in the former case with the tale of Baubo's exposing her genitals (to crack up the goddess) as a key part of the Demeter myth, causing a respite from winter (a VERY cool bit of myth I did NOT know about) and the shockingly similar tale of Ame-no-Uzume--this one I did know about--where she does the same to end the darkness by luring Amaterasu out of a cave. It's especially egregious because in the latter case, Ame-no-Uzume is a culture hero, as she is the progenitor of Kagura dance and a cultural goddess of comedy and humor as well as the progenitor of the Sarume clan. She is, basically along all of Hyde's rubric, a proper trickster. It also frankly ignores the long cultural history of women as archetypes in bawdy stories, often notably post-menopausal, dating from the Baubo myth above to the Wife of Bath all the way to the venerable Nanny Ogg of Terry Prachett. Mostly what Hyde's long sidebar of torturously trying to convince people female tricksters aren't a thing does is convince me that they were a thing that are not well documented or understood in religious/mythological studies. Also it made me want to read Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods, though I kind of wish it was about more than just Baba Yaga. Hopefully it can lead me to the origins of other feminine tricksers along the way.
Okay, that rant aside--a really wonderful book that talks about a lot of things that define my approach to, well, existence. I loved this book so much.
July 12, 2023
What an interesting book. I was unsure of the narration at first and the introduction, but I've really come around to what Hyde had to say. His scope of trying to understand the role that trickster figures have in mythology and culture is truly staggering: though he focuses on several major figures in various myths (Hermes, Loki, Coyote, Monkey King, Krishna, Legba), his statements do skew towards Western canons.
Really, staggering. A few key takeaways:
1. Tricksters introduce concepts of hunger, which is frequently paired with death. (They eat something, thereby introducing death. See the case of Hermes stealing and eating Apollo's sacred cattle. Previously they were immortal?) Often, tricksters do not wholly indulge their hunger.
2. Tricksters are inventors and culture-creators (think Prometheus stealing fire; artifice is done by "art" which can imitate, and therefore "lie", about what something is). Tricksters travel so widely that they know that items take on different meanings depending on context (ie Homer's Odysseus travels so far from the sea that his oar is mistaken for a winnowing tool).
3. Tricksters cross the boundaries between the sacred and the profane (and life/death; in general they are just beings that dwell in the liminal, in the uncertain). The discussion around Mary Douglas' work on dirt -- being dependent on context -- was fascinating. Indeed, the Legba / Maya story about dishwater, and that Legba splashes dishwater on her causes Maya to leave the earth was very interesting. And in such tricky stories about a trickster's transgression is indeed how the trickster makes/reshapes the world around him to better suit him (or create a place for himself that didn't exist in the previous world)
4. ...and that is why tricksters often (initially) challenge the status quo until they are integrated into the system, ie like Hermes whom Zeus acknowledges and gives the job of messenger of the gods, and a god who can go into the underworld and, say, bring back Persephone. It was also interesting Hyde's claim that such mythological additions could reflect changes in society, ie that landed aristocracy/farmers had to make room for craftspeople and traders, reflected in the story where Apollo/Hermes becoming besties after Hermes tricked him.
5. Tricksters may be creative, and lustful, but that creativity is not reproductive. Instead tricksters, Coyote especially, are itinerant. They do not stay home and do what Beaver or Lion do; Coyote or Raven or Spider mimic others (sometimes to positive ends, sometimes not) and defy classification. See liminality again.
Even with all of the above established, there were so many current examples, too. He included John Cage and Maxine Hong Kinsgston in discussions around silence and the sacred/profane and how culture uses silence and shame to maintain order; Marcel Duchamp and Robert Maplethorpe and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" around the sacred and the profane and Levi-Strauss on signs and signified. Hyde talked at length about Frederick Douglass and outsider status and liminality (black and white, freed slave, etc etc)
All in all, whew, a whirlwind of a book. I really enjoyed it. It was certainly on the more academic end of the spectrum, but I was a fan.
Really, staggering. A few key takeaways:
1. Tricksters introduce concepts of hunger, which is frequently paired with death. (They eat something, thereby introducing death. See the case of Hermes stealing and eating Apollo's sacred cattle. Previously they were immortal?) Often, tricksters do not wholly indulge their hunger.
2. Tricksters are inventors and culture-creators (think Prometheus stealing fire; artifice is done by "art" which can imitate, and therefore "lie", about what something is). Tricksters travel so widely that they know that items take on different meanings depending on context (ie Homer's Odysseus travels so far from the sea that his oar is mistaken for a winnowing tool).
3. Tricksters cross the boundaries between the sacred and the profane (and life/death; in general they are just beings that dwell in the liminal, in the uncertain). The discussion around Mary Douglas' work on dirt -- being dependent on context -- was fascinating. Indeed, the Legba / Maya story about dishwater, and that Legba splashes dishwater on her causes Maya to leave the earth was very interesting. And in such tricky stories about a trickster's transgression is indeed how the trickster makes/reshapes the world around him to better suit him (or create a place for himself that didn't exist in the previous world)
4. ...and that is why tricksters often (initially) challenge the status quo until they are integrated into the system, ie like Hermes whom Zeus acknowledges and gives the job of messenger of the gods, and a god who can go into the underworld and, say, bring back Persephone. It was also interesting Hyde's claim that such mythological additions could reflect changes in society, ie that landed aristocracy/farmers had to make room for craftspeople and traders, reflected in the story where Apollo/Hermes becoming besties after Hermes tricked him.
5. Tricksters may be creative, and lustful, but that creativity is not reproductive. Instead tricksters, Coyote especially, are itinerant. They do not stay home and do what Beaver or Lion do; Coyote or Raven or Spider mimic others (sometimes to positive ends, sometimes not) and defy classification. See liminality again.
Even with all of the above established, there were so many current examples, too. He included John Cage and Maxine Hong Kinsgston in discussions around silence and the sacred/profane and how culture uses silence and shame to maintain order; Marcel Duchamp and Robert Maplethorpe and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" around the sacred and the profane and Levi-Strauss on signs and signified. Hyde talked at length about Frederick Douglass and outsider status and liminality (black and white, freed slave, etc etc)
All in all, whew, a whirlwind of a book. I really enjoyed it. It was certainly on the more academic end of the spectrum, but I was a fan.
November 25, 2024
This book almost reads like an afterword or addendum to The Gift. I enjoyed it very much.
October 20, 2022
This book should come with a warning: This book will change your life.
August 4, 2021
First, a caveat, this is very much an academic text. If you took a shot for every time Lewis Hyde wrote “, then, “ to make a point, you’d be dead by chapter 2. Despite the academic density though, it is extremely thorough and clearly written.
This book succeeded in widening my view of tricksters. While mainly focusing on Hermès, the author makes a broad tour of tricksters both mythic and human and uses them to illustrate several important points. Tricksters are agents of transformation, existing at “the boundaries” to challenge systems and either destroy or strengthen them. The key idea I was left with is that no system of belief is completely bullet proof, but by having tricksters, mythologies and societies are able to reconcile their own contradictions and embrace a little bit of chaos - a system with tricksters can bend, a system without tricksters will break (or break others - Lewis Hyde makes a few points about Protestantism, and how its inflexibility becomes oppressive both internally and externally). Tricksters also help you to embrace outside perspective, which I’ve already experienced post trickster, reading some non western literature.
This book isn’t perfect however - while it is extremely interesting, it often wasn’t more than the sum of its parts. I might have preferred this as several essays instead of an entire book. Several sections were a drag and the author had a tendency to ramble; the conclusion of the book contains several new ideas just as I thought he would be wrapping up. And he admits to forcing some ideas, such as the idea that the biological necessity of hunting should necessarily lead to tricksters.
Nonetheless, tricksters have invaded my brain - I’ll be on the lookout for boundaries and just a little bit of chaos from now on.
This book succeeded in widening my view of tricksters. While mainly focusing on Hermès, the author makes a broad tour of tricksters both mythic and human and uses them to illustrate several important points. Tricksters are agents of transformation, existing at “the boundaries” to challenge systems and either destroy or strengthen them. The key idea I was left with is that no system of belief is completely bullet proof, but by having tricksters, mythologies and societies are able to reconcile their own contradictions and embrace a little bit of chaos - a system with tricksters can bend, a system without tricksters will break (or break others - Lewis Hyde makes a few points about Protestantism, and how its inflexibility becomes oppressive both internally and externally). Tricksters also help you to embrace outside perspective, which I’ve already experienced post trickster, reading some non western literature.
This book isn’t perfect however - while it is extremely interesting, it often wasn’t more than the sum of its parts. I might have preferred this as several essays instead of an entire book. Several sections were a drag and the author had a tendency to ramble; the conclusion of the book contains several new ideas just as I thought he would be wrapping up. And he admits to forcing some ideas, such as the idea that the biological necessity of hunting should necessarily lead to tricksters.
Nonetheless, tricksters have invaded my brain - I’ll be on the lookout for boundaries and just a little bit of chaos from now on.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2013
I enjoy reading about mythology, I think, because I find myths to be resonant, but it's often hard to put my finger on why they seem so significant. In Trickster Makes This World, Hyde examines tricksters from various cultures (Raven, Coyote, Hermes, Krishna, Eshu) and talks about the ways that these figures signify a certain attitude toward life. For Hyde, tricksters embody the ability to act with cunning, turn accidents into opportunities, and subvert those assumptions that are so ingrained they often feel like facts. I think he sums it up pretty well with this line from the final chapter:
"...humankind has two responses when faced with all that engenders awe and dread in this world: the way of the shaman (and the priests), which assumes a spiritual world, bows before it, and seeks to make alliances; and the way of the trickster (and the humanists), which recognizes no power beyond its own intelligence, and seeks to seize and subdue the unknown with wit and cunning."
"...humankind has two responses when faced with all that engenders awe and dread in this world: the way of the shaman (and the priests), which assumes a spiritual world, bows before it, and seeks to make alliances; and the way of the trickster (and the humanists), which recognizes no power beyond its own intelligence, and seeks to seize and subdue the unknown with wit and cunning."
November 3, 2013
I read the hardcover edition. Great text about how to circumnavigate traps of culture.
And at his mother’s home, Hermes…
slipped sideways through the keyhole,
like fog on an autumn breeze.
The trickster is a boundary-crosser, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight. Trickster is the god of the threshold in all its forms.
Chance the rap and slip the trap
poem by ishmael reed about ralph ellison
i am outside of
history. i wish
i had some peanuts; it
looks hungry there in
its cage.
i am inside of
history, its
hungrier than i
thot.
I’m no prophet. My job is making windows where there were once walls. - Michel Foucault
Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. - Chuang Tzu
And at his mother’s home, Hermes…
slipped sideways through the keyhole,
like fog on an autumn breeze.
The trickster is a boundary-crosser, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight. Trickster is the god of the threshold in all its forms.
Chance the rap and slip the trap
poem by ishmael reed about ralph ellison
i am outside of
history. i wish
i had some peanuts; it
looks hungry there in
its cage.
i am inside of
history, its
hungrier than i
thot.
I’m no prophet. My job is making windows where there were once walls. - Michel Foucault
Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. - Chuang Tzu
February 9, 2023
I personally have a soft spot for the trickster gods and this author brilliantly highlights the importance of that role. The trickster is the bridge between worlds, between order and chaos, between heaven and hell. Between gods and demons, they are the mutations between species. Their purpose is to keep life in motion and prevent the polarity of life remaining stuck. The trickster achieves this oftentimes unwittingly, their folly leads to change, growth and evolution, though on first glance many would say he is merely a nuisance.
For me personally I especially appreciate the way the trickster is always playfully attempting to game life but is caught in an endless loop of never being able to outwit himself. The belief that he can somehow win the ultimate unwinable game, the game against yourself.
For me personally I especially appreciate the way the trickster is always playfully attempting to game life but is caught in an endless loop of never being able to outwit himself. The belief that he can somehow win the ultimate unwinable game, the game against yourself.
May 17, 2011
Overall: Clunky. Watered-down. But with a fair amount of interesting material insofar as it is quoted and paraphrased (as opposed to generated by Mr. Hyde himself).
The text sketches out some luke warm versions of altogether dropdead wonderful myths, each choicecut from around the globe. Legba, Argus, Coyote, etc. But Mr. Hyde is too present in both page count and interpretation for my liking. I want above all else to fantasize and weigh the various implications myself. He is a handholder and an oversimplifier, and I want his voice out. The myths in themselves are just so much more fun and interesting than he is. They do not need to be countersunk into a slab of tedious conjectures.
The text sketches out some luke warm versions of altogether dropdead wonderful myths, each choicecut from around the globe. Legba, Argus, Coyote, etc. But Mr. Hyde is too present in both page count and interpretation for my liking. I want above all else to fantasize and weigh the various implications myself. He is a handholder and an oversimplifier, and I want his voice out. The myths in themselves are just so much more fun and interesting than he is. They do not need to be countersunk into a slab of tedious conjectures.
February 5, 2009
This book is good for two reasons: 1. It makes anthropolgy super-interesting by giving raunchy examples of devious (and entertaining) beings; Tricksters 2. It exposed me to the idea of guilt and shame cultures, which every educated person should know about - but somehow I went to college for 9 years and never heard of it.
This book is written by a man who was head of creative writing at Harvard, so if you don't have 50k a year to spend on school, this is the next best thing.
This book is written by a man who was head of creative writing at Harvard, so if you don't have 50k a year to spend on school, this is the next best thing.
July 13, 2022
Dnf 30%
Funny how Hyde came up with his own definition of trickster—which doesn’t include deception btw—and then blames other academics for why women are excluded and can’t be tricksters.
The writing has a certain type of academic pretentiousness that didn’t land for me. (What does he mean that the cows Hermes kidnapped represent asexuality?) I tried to read this in a book club and we simply had enough and moved on.
We’re looking for other books with Trickster god myths now.
Funny how Hyde came up with his own definition of trickster—which doesn’t include deception btw—and then blames other academics for why women are excluded and can’t be tricksters.
The writing has a certain type of academic pretentiousness that didn’t land for me. (What does he mean that the cows Hermes kidnapped represent asexuality?) I tried to read this in a book club and we simply had enough and moved on.
We’re looking for other books with Trickster god myths now.
March 4, 2008
Another great book by Lewis Hyde. It's not as exciting as The Gift - but an interesting look at the "trickster" in native cultures and in contemporary life. It appealed to me as a look at the socio-cultural history of people who are Machiavellian types, manipulators, and behind the scenes puppet masters. I think W and Cheney are modern day tricksters.
May 10, 2019
This book was a delight from start to finish, I found myself attempting to delay my reading of it so it would last longer. There were many well thought out and researched ideas in here that led me down on research paths of my own, and I’m so glad I took the dive into reading this.
July 5, 2017
É meu tipo de livro: um compêndio cultural de visão ampla cheio de análises reveladoras. A quarta parte é um pouco repetitiva, e o livro acaba girando em falso - o que é uma pena, considerando a pertinência de tudo que veio antes. Mas a intensidade das imagens e dos argumentos mais do que compensa as inconsistências formais, e oferece todo um vocabulário para pensar as relações de poder, a formação da identidade e o trabalho criativo. É claro que a amplitude de visão prejudica a profundidade e a precisão em alguns momentos, mas esse é quase um efeito colateral, e Hyde é um trickster demasiado humano para ser capaz de escapar a TODAS as armadilhas...
March 26, 2025
i really enjoyed the first half of the book, where the author retells various different stories of trickster characters in world mythologies and performs in-depth comparative analyses of the stories. tricksters are often found at the threshold, at boundaries between places, and we still see them around today. for example, last week as i was listening to this audiobook and walking around manhattan, i looked up to see a statue of hermes (mercury) lording over grand central station!
but the second half of the book lost me, where it compares mythological tricksters to real-life figures. (for example: yes, trickster figures often seek to change their realities; but i don’t think you can juxtapose hermes in the homeric hymn to frederick douglass in a non-corny way.)
but the second half of the book lost me, where it compares mythological tricksters to real-life figures. (for example: yes, trickster figures often seek to change their realities; but i don’t think you can juxtapose hermes in the homeric hymn to frederick douglass in a non-corny way.)
February 1, 2021
The author casts a wide net in his exploration of trickster gods and their cultural impact. And that includes the question: how is the trickster embodied in our heroes? This is the question that causes Mr. Hyde to go on a quest to find important historic personalities that portrayed the trait of the trickster.
August 23, 2023
An intriguing topic but the presentation of the topic is waaay too something for me. Too intellectual? Too many references to concepts brand new to me? It came down to my understanding about 75% of what the author was trying to convey and finding this more of a difficult, rather than insightful, read.
January 21, 2023
Crazy deep survey of the trickster through history and across all geographies and cultures. Fascinatingly detailed lessons and observations of the power of chaos, magic, deception, and almost always fun! Recommended!
January 3, 2025
widereaching, incormative, quite personal and fun, though I sometimes also felt like there wasn't enough source for some of the claims. writing resource and analysis and self help book rolled into one.
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