Customer Reviews

The Waste Land and Other Writings (Modern Library)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I generally like Mary Karr's work, but I have to say that I was terribly disappointed when this book arrived.

Issue 1: POOR SELECTION. I chose it to teach to my undergraduates in a Modern Poetry class, thinking it would have the essential Eliot poems, plus a good collection of his essays. In fact, it has Eliot's early poems and The Waste Land, but has nothing after that, no "The Hollow Men," no "Four Quartets," no "Ariel Poems." I'm guessing that the press decided to put out a cheap edition of those Eliot poems that were in the public domain and that they could therefore get for free. For anything published later, you are out of luck.

Issue 2: NO FOOTNOTES. Eliot is a very difficult poet, and undergraduates need some help in understanding him. This edition has no notes of any sort outside of those that Eliot appended to "The Waste Land."

Issue 3: NO TRANSLATION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE PASSAGES. Outside of the fact that readers will miss many of Eliot's diffucult references and allusions, Eliot's poems and essays assume that the reader can read French, Greek, and Latin, and those passages are presented to the reader without a translation.

All in all, this feels like a quickly-thrown-together edition that is poorly selected and reader unfriendly.

T.S. Eliot was a major poet and one I'm never sure I have ever really understood though I have read his poems many times. This is a fine selection of important poems and some major interpretive essays in an easy package to buy and read.

Yeah, "The Waste Land" is one of those poems that everyone has to read because it so forms our current cultural milieu. And it should be read for that reason. I think, however, that most people, because they read it for that reason, only respect the poem (and Eliot) and don't necessarily like it. They don't always feel it.

I'm one of that other kind of reader, though, that just loves this poem. I love it because I find in it such a profound articulation of a lostness, a despair, that I think we all, at times, feel. And I'm one of the readers that see Eliot in the poem as working through the despair, sewing a couple of small seeds of hope. "The Waste Land" is a poem that I find myself reaching for to keep me going.

I particularly love this edition of Eliot's poems because it contains Mary Karr's essay that is essential for anyone who reads this poem "with the soul."

The rest of the selection of poems is excellent as well. The inclusion of many of Eliot's most important essays, particularly "Tradition and the Individual Talent," also makes this edition valuable. For multiple reasons, this is a must-have.

I just finished a Modern Library anthology of T.S. Eliot's writings entitled simply "The Waste Land And Other Writings". Beginning with an entertaining if somewhat controversial introduction by Mary Karr, the next 234 pages provide a glimpse into Eliot's creative and critical mind. Being an autodidact, I confess ignorance about where Mr. Eliot stands in the esteem of academia today, but I was able to easily find - thanks to the internet - plenty of current syllabi showing that his works are still being discussed.

My interest in Catholic writers during what I consider the New Golden Age of Western Literature (1920 - 1970) led me to this book. I was not disappointed. You may not agree with my designation or its range of years but you will perhaps agree with me that, in a macro sense, this prior era is our nearest peak in literature. It was modernity barely alive after the coronary thrombosis of World War I. American and British education just prior to this gilded age had been at its peak in terms of quality if not quantity, and a high school graduate from 1890 to 1920 would have been a master of English, a worthy apprentice of Latin and Greek, and more than a little acquainted with French. Compared to today's students, most of them would appear to be polyglots.

Not only that, but the culture then was fairly stable (no culture is perfect) and uniform, based on the now-tired hyphenate: Judeo-Christian principles. This does not mean that people were more religious then; simply, that they consciously or unconsciously played by the cultural rules. The stigma of "sinner" was greater for both those who believed and those who didn't, but for those who didn't, it didn't mean much outside the public eye. If this seems an oversimplified explanation, I plead innocence by reason of my education, if you'll tolerate the joke. In any event, when World War II came along and finished ole Modernity, up flew the phoenix called Post-Modernism.

The old modern may not have worried much about the application of Judeo-Christian principles to his individual life, but he did place some value on the macro effects of that culture. He transgressed, perhaps, but he did not proselytize his sin; he did not want his transgression to become accepted in the culture because he saw the bigger picture. With postmodernism, there is no big picture, "there's only you and I and we just disagree" or so the pop song goes.

Keeping the discussion at its current level of abstraction, I would define postmodernism as modernism without the Judeo-Christian framework. Modern man has always transgressed, but with our new era, he can transgress and be accepted at the same time. He can be ignorant of the facts and still be a teacher. He can make vice virtue and virtue vice and the world still turns. There is a love of progress without any clear idea of the destination; there is no accountability because there is no reality to account for; and, after putting the puny human animal in his insignificant place in the universe, most postmodernists then exalt this humanity, especially the individual human, to the center of everything. All of which makes for entertaining ideas but strangely empty minds if by empty we mean to say unable to comprehend the truth.

Take, for instance, the essay by Syracuse University's Mary Karr that opens the book. Professor Karr writes with clarity and humor, but there are deficiencies that a critic could not fail to notice. Early on, she praises Eliot for his avant-garde techniques while acknowledging that there are some who, while they admit he's still avant-garde, "eschew actually reading Eliot because he's a dead white guy who represents the old guard." You can't get past the irony here. Her reason for allowing Eliot to be characterized this way becomes apparent when, concerning the semi-explanatory notes that Eliot included with his poem "The Waste Land", she writes: "It's a little-recognized fact that the controversial notes were an afterthought...." Later, "Even knowing the randomness of the notes' insertion, you still can't ignore them wholesale. There they squat in the text. But once you stop cowing in their shadow, you can decipher them as whimsical rather than smug." Still later, they are "capricious and shifting in both purpose and attitude." And there are many more of the same. (Karr is not alone; I read an analysis by Nancy K. Gish in her book "The Waste Land - A Student's Companion to the Poem" that also gave short shrift to Eliot's notes.)

By devaluing the notes, Karr fashions her analysis using one of postmodernisms favorite tools: a linguistic theory that places the word on the page above the intent of the author. She makes it clear that, for her, "The Waste Land" is a much better poem without bothering too much with what Eliot was trying to communicate. She does this because Eliot was far more conventional in his personal life than perhaps she and her readers would like to admit, and his later scholarship and the essays that came out of that scholarship lend an authority that works against the postmodern desire to turn "The Waste Land" into a life creed; and because Eliot ultimately rejected the latent nihilistic world view that others found there and renewed his devotion to his Catholic faith. To read a poem as a juxtaposition of words that communicate some inchoate feeling or desire without reference to the author's meaning is to miss the point. Not so, says the postmodernist, there is no point to miss.

One final note about Karr's essay: she appears to be aware that many of her reader's will be indoctrinated by postmodern narcissism when she writes "Not to read it [The Waste Land] is to pretend that we of this twenty-first century have drawn ourselves whole (M.C.Escher-like) from our own heads. It's to ignore history, taking on faith that what now seems beautiful or important or right...has no source other than this time, this place." Well said. I would only add that "reading" involves discovering, as much as is possible, the author's intent otherwise we shall still be drawn whole from our own heads.

When I was 18 (50 years ago), I was introduced to this grossly overrated poet. I preferred traditional poetry, and did not even have much use for Whitman. I forced myself to read all of Eliot's poems. The mind shudders at the very thought. I much prefer James Elroy Flecker, whose poetry is completely different and so much better. Perhaps some of Eliot's prose writings deserve to survive, but he just isn't a great poet.

perfect condition, fast shipping, and had ALL the Eliot poems I needed in additon to The Waste Land!! Thanks!