Is there an affliction more feared than dementia, with its relentless erasure of memory? Although acknowledging that dread, cultural critic Lewis Hyde reveals in his provocative A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past that there are times the conscious expungement of memory may be the only rational, humane response, especially to instances of profound trauma and injustice.
Hyde (The Gift) describes his book as a thought experiment designed to "test the proposition that forgetfulness can be more useful than memory or, at the very least, that memory functions best in tandem with forgetting." Forgoing a conventional narrative, he assembles a "prose collage" of journal-like entries whose building blocks are quotations culled from years of wide reading. They serve as the departure point for his own reflections on the operation of memory and forgetting in four broad, often overlapping, categories: mythology, personal psychology, politics and the creative spirit.
Drawing on literature, art, history, psychology, sociology and personal experience, Hyde is less concerned about advancing his thesis--one he recognizes is not without controversy--than he is in creating a work that will "both invite and provoke a reader's own free reflections." In a book whose sources range from St. Augustine to former Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell, his generous invitation is easily grasped.
Hyde recognizes that, with any book, readers will "extract the unique book of our own engagement." That's especially so when the topic is as fraught as this one. Expansive in its scope and at best suggestive in its answers, Lewis Hyde's bold thought experiment in A Primer for Forgetting is one well worth engaging. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer