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Rating: 
Summary: Masterful non-fiction writing
Review: A brilliantly written, funny and moving book--filled with substantial scholarship and honest about its own stakes. To tell you the truth, I was moved to write this review by the two reviews below, both of which fall pretty wide of the mark. First, this is an amazingly well-written book, and that goes for both Hyde's prose style and his winding structure. His reflections of his own project do not upstage the subject matter but rather deepen and situate it in "time-haunted history." I wonder why anyone would expect or want a book about tricksters to be linear and transparent. By this I don't mean to suggest that Hyde is exactly "performing" the trickster in his writing. He announces his approach perfectly well: Saturn dreams of Mercury. I suspect that this book will frustrate all species of lazy reader because it asks for a sustained, continuous, and thorough reading. All the chapters are rewarding individually, but they are best read sequentially. If you want to be able to look at a table of contents and pick one or two chapters by topic, find a doctoral thesis, or a utilitarian academic monograph.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful non-fiction writing
Review: A brilliantly written, funny and moving book--filled with substantial scholarship and honest about its own stakes. To tell you the truth, I was moved to write this review by the two reviews below, both of which fall pretty wide of the mark. First, this is an amazingly well-written book, and that goes for both Hyde's prose style and his winding structure. His reflections of his own project do not upstage the subject matter but rather deepen and situate it in "time-haunted history." I wonder why anyone would expect or want a book about tricksters to be linear and transparent. By this I don't mean to suggest that Hyde is exactly "performing" the trickster in his writing. He announces his approach perfectly well: Saturn dreams of Mercury. I suspect that this book will frustrate all species of lazy reader because it asks for a sustained, continuous, and thorough reading. All the chapters are rewarding individually, but they are best read sequentially. If you want to be able to look at a table of contents and pick one or two chapters by topic, find a doctoral thesis, or a utilitarian academic monograph.
Rating: 
Summary: Escaping the Massive Yawn
Review: Imagine, just as I was getting bored with this book, through an odd act of contingence its binding literally fell apart in my hands. A Loki-Eshu-hermetic encounter? What a thankful rescue. Rambling and indulgent, such repetition would be better kept to a long essay rather than a full book. A trickster's story, indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: The Trickster's crucial role
Review: The Trickster is a mythological or archetypal character found in stories throughout the world. The best known in Western myth are Hermes and Loki. In this fascinating study, Lewis Hyde gives equal time to the Native American Coyote, the Chinese Monkey King and India's Krishna. At first glance, these characters are merely pranksters; humorous, sometimes annoying and occasionally dangerous ne'er do wells who disrupt the normal flow of things. As the title of this book suggests, Hyde believes tricksters are much more than this. He makes a convincing case that tricksters are essential in both preserving and transforming societies. Without their disruptions, cultural stagnation would result. He points out that tricksters can either help to maintain the status quo or bring about radical transformation. An example of the former case is illustrated by carnivals such as Mardi Gras, where social customs are predictably and temporarily ignored or reversed. This allows people to vent their frustrations and unleash their inhibitions before returning to normal life. Hyde mentions the abolishionist Frederick Douglas as an example of the more radical sort of trickster who brings about permanent change. Within the institution of slavery, slaves were allowed one week of freedom and revelry. Douglas was not satisfied with this; he wanted to completely overhaul the status quo and indeed helped to accomplish this. Trickster Makes this World describes the antics of both actual (e.g. Douglas, the artist Marcel Duchamp) and mythic (e.g. Hermes, Coyote, Krishna) tricksters. This, of course, suggests a worldview similar to that of Joseph Campbell and others, who see the mythic as the foundation of real life. This book isn't easy reading; Hyde has a trickster-like style of zig-zagging his way all over a very expansive intellectual terrain. It doesn't so much make a case or present an argument as suggest a way of seeing the world. At the center of this worldview is not the all-powerful Zeus, but the slippery messenger/thief/trader Hermes (or one of his counterparts). Getting back to the provocative title, Trickster does not make the world in the conventional way (as the God of the Bible, for example). Rather, he (tricksters are usually male, an issue Hyde devotes a chapter to exploring) remakes and readjusts the world in which he finds himself. This is arguably a task as important as creation itself, or an essential part of creation.
Rating:
Summary: Great, but the naysayers are right as well
Review: This book, like the myths it describes, is an interpretation. It is one man's exploration of his own exploration of the trickster myths. True, some of the tricksters he indentifies don't live up to his own definition; and true, his own definition is elastic. The structure of the book is a bit circular and tangential, not the most eloquently structured thing I've read. But... the book is also full of insights about how we erect a world, both in story and in fact. It makes distinctions that, as other reviewers have said, are glaringly obvious once you've read them, but were somehow beyond the pale before you read the book. I've not yet read The Gift, though I did purchase it after reading half-way through this book. I found "Trickster" inspiring and insightful, often funny, always surprising. Hyde does not promise us a scholarly dissection, which, when you consider that we're talking about myths, is entirely appropriate. His writing, even when he takes us on tangents, is fluid and clear. He's someone I'd want to have dinner with, maybe once a month or so, just to hear where his thinking is going and where it's been. Read the excerpt. See for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: a remarkable synthesis
Review: This is a bad book. Bad. Bad, bad, bad. Verbose, babbling, self-indulgent, and filled with irrelevant tangents. At no place is there a fundamental statement of the book's thesis (perhaps because it does not have one). One reads on and on, hoping, praying, for some Point. But alas, there is none. Another image comes to mind: like swimming the length of a pool under water while holding your breath. But the end never comes; finally you have to come to the surface just because you can't take it any more. Do not waste your time with this book.
Rating:
Summary: A splendid achievement
Review: This is one of the best discussions of certain aspects of the human situation that I have ever read. I find some of the other negative reviews incomprehensible, but I would suggest that merely underscores that this book is "not for everyone": It will speak to whom it speaks though.
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