Comments on: Can You Feel Lit? T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

By: Sillstaw

Sillstaw — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:45:57 +0000

Zach82: It took me three readings of that sentence to understand that.

I just had to mention TV Tropes classifying this as an example of “True Art is Incomprehensible.” They joked that in order to get half the references, you should be an English professor. I guess it wouldn’t help with the Sanskrit bits, though.

By: Zach82

Zach82 — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:41:18 +0000

Epiphenomenalism is the idea in the philosophy of mind that consciousness is a mere byproduct of physical processes and that consciousness has no causal power over those physical processes.

By: Beth

Beth — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:07:07 +0000

Nope, E., I don’t think anything is more difficult than “Finnegan’s Wake.”

I adore “Portrait of a Lady” and “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” so I tried “The Wasteland,” but I just couldn’t seem to stick it out. I’ll just stick with Prufrock, I think.

This is a great column. Love it!

By: E.King

E.King — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:41:12 +0000

This book can’t be any worse that Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

By: Scott A.

Scott A. — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:25:20 +0000

The coolest part of the poem is arguably the bat-faced babies. Love these blog posts.

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:42:05 +0000

I remember reading “The Waste Land” in a senior poetry class in high school. Our teacher told us flat-out that she didn’t expect us to understand it, even the head of the English department, with a Ph.D in English Lit, couldn’t fully understand it.

Knowing that Eliot himself didn’t even really understand his poem in its entirety makes me feel a lot better about my high school English education.

Cool poem, though. Even though I didn’t “get” most of it.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:55:28 +0000

Ah this brings back fond memories of trying to memorize The Waste Land the summer between Sophomore and Junior year of high school. And then giving up.

Thanks for the Groucho story, that’s top-notch dinner convo!

By: JaneM

JaneM — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:30:31 +0000

excellent! Always liked eliot but now i’m not sure why (lol)

can’t wait for the next column

By: Travis

Travis — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:16:12 +0000

I love this column. Keep ‘em coming! What’s next?