The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose
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Newly revised and in paperback for the first time, this definitive, annotated edition of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land includes as a bonus all the essays Eliot wrote as he was composing his masterpiece. Enriched with period photographs, a London map of cited locations, groundbreaking information on the origins of the work, and full annotations, the volume is itself a landmark in literary history. "More than any previous editor, Rainey provides the reader with every resource that might help explain the genesis and significance of the poem. . . . The most imaginative and useful edition of The Waste Land ever published.”--Adam Kirsch, New Criterion "For the student or for anyone who wants to get the maximum amount of information out of a foundational modernist work, this is the best available edition.”--Publishers Weekly
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I desperately want to like The Waste Land. There flashes of genius in this poem that suggest that the entire poem should hold together, but every time I read it I get the sense that it is a massive joke, a con job, that the point of the joke is to string together chunks of gibberish and then convince the world that it is a work of art.
I purchased this book in the hope of getting some purchase on the meaning of the poem. I think I may have gotten a better understanding of the poem as a by-product of the material in this book. What was missing was any explanation of the poem, how it hangs together, what its “plan” is or if it has a “plan.”
The book starts with an overview of Eliot's life and the publication history of the poem. This was useful insofar as Eliot mixed into the poem, the scenes and events that he was dealing with. Thus, the references to the City of London - the financial district - reflect Eliot's work as a banker at Loyd's of London.
On the other hand, the biographical material point to the “overrated con job” theory. It seems that Ezra Pound pushed Eliot's poem to people who were told that it was brilliant and promised to publish it and to pay for it without ever seeing it. Then Pound convinced the American publisher to award it the Dial Prize as a way of paying more to Eliot than standard rates, which, of course, insured that it would regarded as too brilliant to criticize. Early reactions indicated that people had no idea what the poem meant and Eliot in later life seemed to suggest that the poem didn't have a plan.
Eliot's notes - designed to add volume to the poem to make it long enough to publish as a book - are included here. They are relatively cryptic and may be misleading as to Eliot's plan for the poem. The editor adds his own annotations for the poem. These annotations are far more extensive and offer some insights, but are overwhelming in part since the editor offers entire poems that Eliot was referring to. The editor offers no insights into why these selections were chosen by Eliot or what they mean to the poem.
I guess my take-away is that the Waste Land is an overwhelming pastiche of references to other sources, obscure and famous, and that The Waste-Land is a breathtaking survey of early twentieth-century culture, but is that all it is?
Long story short, I did not draw any closer to understanding The Waste Land or understanding why it is considered one of the great poems of the Twentieth century.
