"One of our true superstars of nonfiction" (David Foster Wallace), Lewis Hyde offers a playful and inspiring defense of forgetfulness by exploring the healing effect it can have on the human psyche.
We live in a culture that prizes memory-how much we can store, the quality of what's preserved, how we might better document and retain the moments of our life while fighting off the nightmare of losing all that we have experienced. But, what if forgetfulness were seen not as something to fear-be it in the form of illness or simple absentmindedness-but rather as a blessing, a balm, a path to peace and rebirth?
A Primer for Forgetting is a remarkable experiment in scholarship, autobiography, and social criticism by the author of the classics The Gift and Trickster Makes This World. It forges a new vision of forgetfulness by assembling fragments of art and writing from the ancient world to the modern, weighing the potential boons forgetfulness might offer the present moment as a creative and political force. It also turns inward, using the author's own life and memory as a canvas upon which to extol the virtues of a concept too long taken as an evil.
Drawing material from Hesiod to Jorge Luis Borges to Elizabeth Bishop to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from myths and legends to very real and recent traumas both personal and historical, A Primer for Forgetting is a unique and remarkable synthesis that only Lewis Hyde could have produced.
"Erudite . . . Hyde roams freely in this book as he tracks down devotees of memory and those who would much rather forget. Both have left their marks and legacies upon history. We are beholden to this author for focusing our attention on their actions, thoughts, words, and deeds."
Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality & Practice
"Poet-essayist Hyde celebrates forgetting as a force for creative potency, personal growth, and social justice, and in doing so reminds us of his talent for intellectual synthesis and his restless, contrarian spirit . . . in the way of Zen Buddhism, [A Primer for Forgetting] is an invitation to forget our very selves so that we might finally see the universe clearly. And alongside all of the brigh
Brendan Driscoll, Booklist (starred review)
"Lewis Hyde's new book is so counterintuitive, so bracingly clear and fresh, that reading it is like leaping into a cold lake on a hot hike. It shocks the mind. It flushes all kinds of monotony and mental fatigue right out of your system . . . It is less argument than art . . . I can't tell you how many times I put it down to stare out the window. I can think of no higher praise."
