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Terry Quist's avatar

*"The Waste Land"

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Terry Quist's avatar

I spent an entire semester in college (not Harvard--that came later) studying "The Wasteland" in depth, with all its recondite allusions and references, in an individual tutorial with an English professor. I had a good base in my liberal arts honors program, where I studied Greek, Latin, classical civilization, and philosophy, so the parsing of references was sheer bliss.

I think Evelyn Waugh more than rhymes with T.S. Eliot, including with regard towards academe. You see this particularly in the precious Oxford scenes of Brideshead Revisited. In one passage, Anthony Blanche declaims "The Wasteland" with a megaphone to the college commons from the balcony of the room where he and his louche, cynical, privileged crew are brunching. This scene is done particularly well with the 1982 BBC serial with Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder (skip the later movie travesty).

One accurate paraphrase of Eliot that I love to quote: "Bad poets borrow; good poets steal." Eliot stole alot, and well.

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