Why Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift” is an Indispensable Read for Any Artist
“I would ask you to remember only this one thing,” said Badger. “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.” -From Crow and Weasel by Barry Lopez
I recently encountered this quote by writer Barry Lopez, and the words lingered with me long after I flitted away from the computer, perhaps because the passage echoed another reading experience. The night before I had finished a novel by Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, and at the end I marveled at Atwood’s ability to tell a great tale — one that is not only well-crafted, but matters in these days and times. In Atwood’s post-apocalyptic world and in the midst of the protagonist Jimmy’s unending search for food and survival, he resorts to inventing a myth to explain the circumstances of what’s happened to the survivors who lack the ability to understand. And the reader senses, in such a hopeless, ravaged situation, how Jimmy needs the story almost as much as his listeners. “Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive,” Lopez writes…
