A Primer for Forgetting

An absorbing exploration of memory, creative freedom and the importance of forgetting . . . wonderfully inventive . . . intriguing and original * * Guardian * * In A Primer for Forgetting, that bold yet gentle intellectual adventurer, Lewis Hyde, harrows the bottomless mysteries of memory and forgetting, trauma and recovery, amnesia and commemoration, reconciliation and forgiveness. If this deep, poignant, soulful, inquisitive, gently tragic and disarmingly erudite book were nine times longer, I would still have felt sad when I realized it was coming to an end -- MICHAEL CHABON The sequence of Lewis Hyde's brilliant cultural interventions here reaches a new height, but also a new level of intimacy and compassion. The book feels not so much written as ""unforgotten"" onto the page, out of our collective desire to rescue the world -- JONATHAN LETHEM 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 * * Wall Street Journal * * An open-hearted interdisciplinarian . . . Hyde could never give a TED Talk. He refuses to sand the edges or round off the corners of his ideas * * Los Angeles Review of Books * * Hyde will shake how you think of things . . . He is one of the best writers we've got going, if only for how seriously he takes his readers' intelligence, how little he's trying to pander. There's no clear answer to how to get past the past, what details or abstractions to remember or let go of, and Hyde is not claiming there is. But if we ever - as individuals or a society - are going to find a way forward, I'm betting that Hyde'll have something to do with it * * Minneapolis Star Tribune * * Praise for Trickster Makes This World: This book is a revelation * * The Times * * A modern classic . . . which celebrates the power of disruptive imagination * * Guardian * * A glorious grab-bag stuffed with necessary loot, a joyful plum pudding rich in treasures -- MARGARET ATWOOD * * Los Angeles Times * * An act of pure pleasure from first to last -- MICHAEL CHABON