The Waste Land - Memorable or Meh ?- Vol. 1, No. 3
A Brief Review - The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis
The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis (Dec. 2022)
This issue is focusing on the book by Hollis (2022) and not an (yet another!?) analysis of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. There are so many books, scholarly papers, and critiques of The Waste Land that it is an enterprise of epic proportions - and it still goes on. Furthermore, I do not cover the issues of T. S. Eliot (the poet) here in terms of controversial perspectives of his politics and personal challenges.
The question is: do we need another examination of the poem?
The answer is Yes - and then - it depends.
I would welcome an ongoing dialogue and critical examination of The Waste Land, and yet, at this point, would rather focus on the gold nugget(s) in all that gravel of commentary found within academic publications. And so here we focus on The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis (2022). I have the First American Edition (paperback, 2023) published by W. W. Norton & Co. (New York). It first published in the UK in 2022.
The reader will encounter in the first few pages (W. W. Norton & Co. edition), several review quotes (“Praise”) from many U.K. newspapers, book reviews, and a university professor. It was noted that this was “Book of the Year” (Hollis) by A New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer, and Sunday Times. So to answer my question above: do we need another examination of the poem? In this regard, Hollis has seemingly uncovered every detail and bit of minutiae as it relates to the historical context in the development and publication of The Waste Land in 1922. For reference and historical placement in literature, Ulysses by James Joyce was published in the same year. In fact, 1922 was a banner year for literature publications including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust and many others.
But I think what the reader will find as the most important writing in this book by Hollis is focused on the dynamic and creative chemistry between Eliot’s writing and the major editing and commentary by Ezra Pound. In my opinion, the subtitle of the book “Biography of Poem” is informative (and accurate) as you will realize the poem itself has an evolution by significant “pruning” as recommended by Ezra Pound. Hollis did an incredible amount of investigative work and so the poem deserves a “biography” - but this is different than a biography of T.S. Eliot - the poet.
I think that the The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (Hollis) is a significant contribution to the literature, but I would also recommend that it would be extremely helpful to have this other publication on hand (or on your shelf - next to Hollis’s book): The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts, Edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot and Preface by Ezra Pound. The visual impact of the editing process is on full display with each facsimile page of the original manuscript accompanied by a typeset transcript on the facing page.
This book shows how the original was edited through handwritten notes by Ezra Pound, by Eliot’s first wife, and by Eliot himself. The copyright date is noted as 1971 (Valerie Eliot) and I have the 1994 paperback edition. My point: it is one thing to read the final poem and take in the online analysis that is available to unravel the mysteries, mythology, meaning, and the modernistic flair line-by-line of The Waste Land, but it is entirely another thing to see and compare how the editing process was transformative and a craft unto itself. In addition, the “Notes” in the book were helpful to decode the layers of Eliot’s intent and meaning within the poem. Some say that the Notes were (are) more of interest than the poem itself.
In the Hollis book, the reader (at the beginning) will encounter a single page with a quote, “There is always another one walking beside you” (from The Waste Land), and a long quote from T. S. Eliot, and one from Ezra Pound. The Hollis book is superb examination of the good, bad, and the ugly of a poem that was a collaboration between Pound and Eliot, while also revealing the anguish and despair of relationships, including that of Vivien Eliot. There was nothing “magical” about the poem in the sense that “it” arrived upon the scene as a result of creative fire in a short period of time…oh no, this was a grueling journey to get the poem to full publication and Hollis provides exhaustive chapters to make that clear. I wonder if this book (Hollis) will mainly appeal to an audience that has scholarly interests in the specific poem (The Waste Land) of Eliot versus versus that of a book offering a complete collection. The paperback edition (Hollis) comes in at 524 pages and it is a demanding read - all the way through.
T. S. Eliot died in 1965 and here we are over a hundred years later (after the publication in 1922) still contemplating a complex poem and the ripple effect in literature, and the myriad of publications (on Google Scholar or a JSTOR search). The Hollis book as kept the momentum going, but have we reached full capacity on criticism of the poem itself? Between the Hollis book (2022) and the Facsimile and Transcript book (Valerie Eliot, 1971/1994), I would say that these two publications would represent critical mass on the topic. Period.
Personally I await the next generation poem that would (will?) represent the post-modern era at the same epic level as The Waste Land. Perhaps it is already been published? Perhaps it could be in the form of lyrics in a song? (e.g., Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan; Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin). Or perhaps we have reached the point of no return for a poem like The Waste Land to emerge in similar in fashion in our times. Maybe it is just as well it does not.
It appears we have moved on. Social media, artificial intelligence, and disruptive technologies have overwhelmed the heartbeat and cognition such that any zeitgeist will have a shelf-life of a few weeks, and any incandescent writing to capture our temperament, mood, and outlook may be as ephemeral as the auroras we observed this spring (2024).
Unless…
I will put this on the someday I will read this list.