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"  There are presents and then there are presents. Some are expected, and others are as surprising as they are perfect. There are gifts that impress only because they are expensive, and others that cost nothing but that linger for years afterward. In short, there are gifts that are mere exchange, and there are gifts that have real meaning. Almost anybody can give the former. The world is full of beautiful and delicious things, which a commercial army has devoted its life to displaying for you. But giving a gift with meaning is one of life&amp;#039;s greatest pleasures, even though it&amp;#039;s also one of the most difficult to attain. Gift-giving is something of a genuine talent. There are those who are great givers and those who aren&amp;#039;t.  The good news is that you can improve. And a good place to start is The Gift by Lewis Hyde. Now that the Christmas season is coming, it&amp;#039;s an important book to have close by.  The Gift is only tangentially about giving. Its full title is The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Usually, the word creativity appalls me. Whenever people talk about their creativity, you can pretty much rest assured that they have never created anything of value. But The Gift can be forgiven. It&amp;#039;s the only guide for creative types I know of that claims widespread allegiance from people who have actually written great things. David Foster Wallace said of it, &amp;quot;No one who is invested in any kind of art\u2026can read The Gift and remain unchanged.&amp;quot; Margaret Atwood called it a masterpiece.  The book itself is a fascinating collection of artistic anecdotes, aesthetic philosophy, and anthropological research into the nature of giving and receiving. Hyde&amp;#039;s key insight is that the gift is a primitive, pre-capitalism phenomenon\u2014a Stone Age form of currency that survives into modernity. The gift is not just pre-capitalism; in a profound way, it is also anti-capitalism. Capitalism works by one object being traded for another. That is the nature of an economy. But the gift is outside of that economy. The gift involves an escape from those bonds. And that is why something given is worth so much more than something traded.  The opening epigraph of The Gift comes from Joseph Conrad: &amp;quot;The artist appeals to...that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition\u2014and, therefore, more permanently enduring.&amp;quot; For Hyde, this animating idea explains the power of art, which dwells outside of its purely capitalist function: the work&amp;#039;s place on bestseller lists, the advance received, and so on. He eventually comes to this conclusion: &amp;quot;I still believe that the primary commerce of art is a gift exchange, that unless the work is the realization of the artist&amp;#039;s gift and unless we, the audience, can feel the gift it carries, there is no art; I still believe that a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed.&amp;quot;  Hyde&amp;#039;s book is for artists; it is about art. But The Gift is also a great guide to the more quotidian business of buying gifts. What makes a powerful gift is the same as what makes a powerful and a memorable work of art. We all know, for example, that just spending a lot of money won&amp;#039;t ensure a great gift, just as we know that simply because something&amp;#039;s bestselling doesn&amp;#039;t mean it&amp;#039;s particularly great. This idea of the separation between a gift and its monetary value motivates the clich\u00E9 (which happens to be true) that it&amp;#039;s the thought that counts. In O. Henry&amp;#039;s great story &amp;quot;The Gift of the Magi,&amp;quot; the very uselessness of the gifts that the characters exchange\u2014hair ornaments for a woman who cut off most of her hair, a watch chain for a man with no watch\u2014is a sign of their intense power. (So, obviously, the lesson here is not to give cash. But if you didn&amp;#039;t know that, you probably need more help than I, or The Gift, can offer you.) Great gifts fit the narratives of our lives. That is their beauty. The best gift I ever received was a simple Scrabble set. It was from my father. In a way it was nothing special, but in a way it was full of meaning. I had been playing a lot of Scrabble with people who would ultimately become my in-laws. And the gift from my father was a way of silently expressing his approval of my life choices. The great gifts are like that, a perfect encapsulation of an emotional moment. The secret of great gifts is the same as that of great art: the shock of recognition by another person.  Unfortunately, knowing what makes a great gift doesn&amp;#039;t make it any easier to find. A gift must also be a surprise, to the giver and the receiver both. What makes a gift great is somewhat mysterious. The word mystery is rooted in the Greek word for a closed mouth. &amp;quot;What the initiate learns at a mystery cannot be talked about,&amp;quot; Hyde writes. &amp;quot;It can be shown, it can be witnessed or revealed, it cannot be explained.&amp;quot; Searching for that perfect gift, according to Hyde, is a search for what nobody else can know but you and the person you&amp;#039;re giving to. It&amp;#039;s hard. It&amp;#039;s supposed to be. You&amp;#039;d better get going.  MORE: Read the rest from our illuminating, occasionally infuriating, and simply exhaustive guide to giving, originally published in Esquire Weekly, here. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a26191/lewis-hyde-the-gift-marche/>