A look at The Wasre Land …

… Eliot’s Pitiless Brilliance. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

One might think that after absorbing all that can be absorbed from Hollis’s book, the enlightened reader will be put on a new track, on his or her way to becoming an active reader of The Waste Land rather than merely a dutiful student of its varied episodes and characters. But my experience suggests that this is not the case, despite all of Hollis’s meticulous criticism and his provocative readings. The Waste Land has a way of shucking off new anatomies, even very good ones. By that I mean that it is so seductive in the rhythms and sequences it imprints in us (in me) over decades that we reflexively revert to our familiar responses.