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T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life

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This book combines two earlier biographies of T. S. Eliot by Gordon, with the inclusion of materials that had come to light since their publication (letters, early poems, and materials relating to Eliot's relationship with his wife). Gordon's book is full of fascinating details about Eliot--an intensely private man, who attempted to hide much of his life from the public view.

Gordon's interpretation of Eliot's poems is what might be called mystical/autobiographical. The emphasis on Eliot's conversion and self-creation (from her first biographies) is still here, but a great deal more is also here about Eliot's marital problems, his relationships with women, and his opinions about minorities. The result is much more in keeping with contemporary biographical focus: Eliot is presented as a self-conflicted and flawed individual--a real man, with real problems, and a difficult life, striving for sainthood, and falling short. Gordon's respect for Eliot keeps it gossipy, but not scandal-mongering.

The only flaw in Gordon's presentation and interpretations seem to be her heavy focus on Eliot's relationship with Emily Hale. Eliot kept up a correspondence with Miss Hale, and possibly harbored some romantic intentions towards her intermittantly. In Gordon's account, this relationship is the touchstone for decoding much of Eliot's poetry. Like those interpretations that seek a homosexual relationship (with Verdenal or someone else) as the real center of Eliot's poetry, I find Gordon's reading occasionally reductive. However, this biography presents much more of the puzzle that is T. S. Eliot, and is a must-read for those interested in the intersections between his life and work.

After reading the trite Eliot biography written by Peter Ackroyd, a man who specializes in biography and not thinking (apparently), I thought all hope lost for an accurate examination of Eliot's life and poetry. Lyndall Gordon's book has restored my faith in biographers. Eliot, himself, was a complex man, and taking on the task of his biography seems as complex as the man and as intimidating as one might assume. Gordon pursues the historical Eliot and the poetic Eliot, finally yielding the necessary blend of biography and poetry required by the life of any moder poet, and certainly more of Eliot than any other. Gordon sees the same need for discussing poetry and biography that Yeats speaks of. This book is for those in need of something much more substantial that the usual tabloid fodder biographers seem intent on producing these days. In it, Eliot comes to life physically, intellectually, and spiritually. A truly romantic effort.

T.S.Eliot, during his lifetime, refused to allow anyone to write an official biography. He was an intensely reserved and private individual. And he was especially secretive about his thirty-year friendship with Emily Hale, who believed that he loved her and would eventually marry her. The friendship survived Eliot's refusal to marry Emily when his first wife, Vivienne, died in 1947. But he broke off all ties with her in 1956 when she gave her letters from him to Princeton University Library. He required them to be sealed until fifty years after the death of the survivor (they become available in 2019), and it is thought that, at the same time, he destroyed all the letters Emily had written to him. Few people knew about this until Lyndall Gordon began her research into Eliot's life.

Others who believed themselves to be close friends, like Mary Trevelyan and John Hayward, his "two closest friends from the late forties to the mid-fifties", also came to realise how little they really knew Eliot. Yet, Lyndall Gordon, using Eliot's poetry and plays as her guide and consulting as many primary sources as she could discover, has done a superb job of writing a biography of this secretive, difficult, imperfect and driven man.

Perhaps Eliot was wise in his distrust of biographers. Perhaps he knew his true essence could not be known by someone who did not know him personally. I'm in agreement that this work is more a critique of Eliot's work across his lifetime than an open window into his life. Gordon becomes most descriptive while discussing his conversion, his philosophy and religious quest. This is mingled with her tendency to paint him as a depressed, detached character unable to commit to his lifelong love interest due to his rigidity. In this way the work is also critique of the person and character of T.S. Eliot. If academically accurate, this book, is rather dry in it's writing style. It left me wanting something richer and deeper still about what it meant to live the life of T.S. Eliot. This work may be brilliant but seemed plodding to me.

I've probably read hundreds of biographies in my life and this one stands out as one of the most literate and fascinating. I've actually begun to read it a second time and I can't remember the last time I reread a biography. Yes, it's complex and not the standard "Eliot's favorite toothpaste was Crest" kind of minutiae that seldom are more than compendiums of trivia. It focuses on Eliot the poet and thinker and tortured soul. If that's not what you're looking for, read something else.

The biographer is so obsessed with Eliot's enigmatic inner state that she forgets to mention the things that happened to him during his life. Gordon speaks of Eliot's desire to enlist in WWI without ever explaining why; she never mentions his attitude toward World War II; she doesn't say that he was expelled from high school, what he majored in at college, what his income was during his years of fame, what kind of contact he kept in with his family and how they thought of him later in his life, what kind of contions he liked to write under in the early years, why he put so many allusions in his poetry if he disdained allusion-hunting. On the other hand, we do get excruciatingly detailed biographies of women like Emily Hale, Mary Trevelyan, and Vivienne Haighwood. The book tries to bore into Eliot's psyche and present all of his poetry as autobiographical, despite the damage done to readings of both the life and the poetry.

This biography is well-done, far superior to Peter Ackroyd's dull and uninspired "Life." What's most important about Lyndall Gordon's biography is her ability to provide us with a roadmap of Eliot's spiritual life and growth, which is a key to grasping the import of Eliot's poems. The inner life, by definition, is extremely difficult for someone else to grasp, and even more difficult to describe for others, but Gordon has managed to arrive at an understanding of Eliot's spiritual life, and to put it into good solid prose for the rest of us. I found this book to be most helpful. Gordon's insights into the inner life of T.S. Eliot are recommended for anyone interested in the man and the poems.

I generally enjoy biography and autobiography, but not Gordon's treatment of Eliot. Except in the case that a subject's life has been covered in minute detail times previously, and the biographer is trying to show something new and different, the first responsibility of the biographer is to tell the story of the subject's life. The biographer should demonstrate, like a good historian, not tell, like a dinner guest. If there is interpretation to be done, it should be through the details included and the structure of the book. With Gordon, everything is wrong. She tells and speculates, and uses detail and anecdote as ornaments for her thoughts and writing. I quote here a short passage from the book, picked by opening the book at random:

"Viviene's moods and nervous states must have given her husband ample cause for self-pity, but I think their marriage was also blighted by something else, something in Eliot, that he half-recognised as the underlying cause of their troubles. What exactly it was, one can only conjecture from other fragmentary remarks in his poems... He seemed to suffer from an inability to empathise with suffering ouside his own experience. In a strange guilty poem he published..."

Seven-hundred pages of this! Arrgh!!

THere are two ways a biography gets written like this: (1) the biographer does not have a good grasp of the subject; (2) the biographer is really more interested in her own opinions than in the subject's life. In this case, I could believe either. Anyhow, definitely not recommended.

The book "T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life" is not quite a biography but it is more an interpretation of Eliot's work from the point of view of his biography. Furthermore, the book concentrates on Eliot's poetry and his dramatic work - his critical work his almost neglected.

I have always been impressed with the man T.S. Eliot but I cannot say the same about his biogrpaher, Lyndall Gordon. This book made my eyes go buggy and released the bats in the bellfry of my brain! I read this book when I was very sick and it was a very poor choice to say the least. I found her writing style thick with euphemisms, abrstractions, and other vague notions. Very little is mentioned about the man Eliot himself! What a ridiculous concept for a biography. She includes far too many segments of his poetry that only make sense in context. She spews them all over the book and leaves the reader wondering aloud, "Say what?". Though this book has a marvelous, intriguing cover it has nothing but blurry accounts of the man, T.S. Eliot. Find another biographer and you will be better off.