T.S. Eliot's THE WASTE LAND in 999 Words (What Everyone Should Know)

Provocative, pithy analysis of THE WASTE LAND for snack-sized, enjoyable reading. From the author's introduction:

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) could not have dreamt that you and I would be reading The Waste Land. He was writing for his age – not for us. The ideal reader of The Waste Land will be a man who has had a classical education and been on the Grand Tour, then lived through the First World War. The four-language dedication to Ezra Pound (called “the better craftsman” – though Eliot says it in fourteenth century Italian) sets the intellectual tone. This is a difficult poem, and deliberately so. Allusions to European literature of all periods abound, jostling with classical mythology, Bible references and a keen observation of the minutiae of London life in the post-war years. The seventeen-page poem was published with its own seven pages of “explanatory” notes from Eliot. The notes are frequently not helpful; indeed many are more obscure than the matters they claim to elucidate. Eliot makes no concessions whatsoever to his readers. If you are not male, classically educated and part of the inter-war generation – well, tough!