why/write

[...] Watching her alternate between naked woundedness and vehemence, I was reminded of Louise Glück’s description of the aspiring poet’s debased yearning — her “adamant need which makes it possible to endure every form of failure.” The harshness of that failure is as little veiled by Julie’s face as a flush.

I am not alone. Whatever else there was or is, writing is with me.

—Lidia Yuknavitch

The Gift’s thesis is that artistic creation is fundamentally an act of generosity, which may be accounted for by commodity systems such as the market economy but which forever evades total capture by those systems. Hyde makes (some occasionally universalizing and exoticizing) sojourns into gift theory and anthropological surveys of cultures with gift-giving economies, and analyzes the way gifts have today been commodified and funneled through philanthropic systems. Yet Hyde maintains that, despite the function of the gift in a given time and place, the gift is fundamentally unique, in that its value always increases as it circulates. The gift contains within it “the mystery of things that increase as they perish”—like compost. The gift may degrade, but it holds potential for eternal growth.