"For the rest one can only say that if Mr Eliot had been pleased to write in demotic English The Waste Land might not have been, as it just is to all but anthro

"For the rest one can only say that if Mr Eliot had been pleased to write in demotic English The Waste Land might not have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists and literati, so much waste paper." Perhaps so, and that's essentially what many of my fellow students and I thought of the poem when we studied it at high school along with Eliot's other epic The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock — although the latter was better tolerated. We spent months poring over The Wasteland line by line until we understood every nuance in every line (or I should say were supposed to know every nuance but I didn't). For some kids like me who were more interested in mathematics and science it was heavy going and boring. If asked now whether I'm glad I studied studied it I'd have to answer yes for all those reasons that come with age and experience but at the time it would have been a definite no. Still, I question whether all that time would not have been better spent on what would have been more fruitful schooling. It seems to me that the work is just too erudite and mature—with all its obscure references—for all but the best students doing English at high school (of which I was not one). Shakespeare's works were much easier and I liked studying them. With that background, I'd say that Guardian review perplexes me as it seems rather shallow and ill informed for a paper of its stature—for reasons that Eliot's The Wasteland is a pillar in the canon of 20th Century poetry and widely recognized as such (I would have thought the reviewer would have been more knowledgeable about Eliot's works). Whilst I know that for a fact, it surprises me that I even know why—given my reservations about the work (seems some of that classwork must have stuck). Incidentally, when I was learning about Eliot's works in the 1960s he was still alive and our teacher (and syllabus) stressed that he was an important modern contemporary poet and that it was essential for us to study his works.