A Primer for Forgetting Getting Past the Past
A Primer for Forgetting Getting Past the Past by Lewis Hyde is a thought-provoking exploration of forgetfulness and its potential benefits, published by Picador on September 22, 2020. This reprint edition spans 384 pages and is presented in English. Hyde examines the cultural emphasis on memory and challenges the notion that forgetfulness is inherently negative, proposing instead that it can serve as a source of healing and renewal.
In this work, Hyde combines elements of biography, personal memoir, and social criticism, drawing on a diverse range of sources from ancient texts to contemporary figures. He presents forgetfulness as a creative and political force, using his own experiences to illustrate its virtues. The book weaves together insights from various disciplines, making it a unique synthesis that invites readers to reconsider their relationship with memory and forgetfulness.
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“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.
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