Remembering to Forget with Lewis Hyde

Fail Better with David Duchovny

Grace Cohen-Chen

Society & Culture

4.6 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lewis Hyde is one of those contemporary authors whose work I think about a lot. He’s spent years reflecting on and writing about topics of great interest to me, like forgetting and forgiveness, but the true trademark of his work is how he processes concepts and describes them. He approaches his work like chasing a butterfly (a lifelong hobby of his), following the dips and curves of an idea until he’s satisfied. We talk about his revered books The Gift and A Primer for Forgetting, and what artists do or do not owe the world. And now that I know he took undergrad classes with John Berryman — the first favorite poet I ever had — I’m going to be thinking about his work, and his beautiful writing, even more. Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Stay up to date with Lemonada on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our shows and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's morning in New York.
0:02.8	Oh, God.
0:06.2	Hey, everybody.
0:07.3	I'm Mandy Patinkin.
0:08.7	And I'm Catherine Grady.
0:09.8	And we have a new podcast.
0:11.7	It's called Don't Listen to Us.
0:14.1	Many of you've asked for our advice.
0:16.1	Tell me, what is wrong with you people?
0:19.2	Don't listen to us.
0:20.3	Our Take It or Leave a Advice show every Wednesday, out now.
0:24.7	A Lemonada Media Original.
0:35.9	I'm David Decovney, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are.
0:42.9	Lewis Hyde is a writer, poet, and cultural critic whose work focuses on the nature of imagination.
0:48.8	He's received the MacArthur Genius Grant and is the former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University.
0:55.1	He's also the author of several books, including The Gift, which is considered a modern
0:59.3	classic about how art is a gift, not a commodity. I read it years ago, and I still think about
1:05.9	it today. It's one of those books that keeps on giving. Ironically, it's called The Gift.
1:11.6	And of course, I had to remember to also talk to him about a primer for forgetting,
1:15.4	another one of his books where he explores the ways that forgetting can be more useful than remembering,
1:20.1	which, of course, dovetails beautifully into any discussion of failure
1:23.7	and how much we can remember, should remember a failure, and how much to forget.
	...

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