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Anyone who liked this article and like (or are curious about) the poem should check out the great Fiona Shaw's reading of it [1]. You can find recordings by ma

Anyone who liked this article and like (or are curious about) the poem should check out the great Fiona Shaw's reading of it [1]. You can find recordings by many fine actor such as John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, and many others, and they tend to be dull, monotonous affairs. Shaw is very different. She's is an incredible actress, and since the 1990s she's been perfecting the poem as a kind of one-woman show where she reads it as the voices of many characters, which is what the poem (as I understand it) is. [1] https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk

tptacek 9mo ago
Have you ever listened to Eliot reading it? Just the worst. "Apreel is the crewellest month..." My thing here though is: this is awesome, Shaw's reading, but is it right? I feel like she's trying to make a coherent character reading at times out of passages deliberately written not to have a clear narrator. (I write this in the spirit of every thread needing a certain titration of not knowing what the hell they're talking about, as an invitation to those who do, and that inviting cluelessness is the purpose I serve here.)
- gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
  I don't know what I'm talking about either, but I'll also point to some scholars approaching TSE from the Econs angle https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2024/gundermantseliot.html#:~:text=In%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Waste%20Land%2C%E2%80%9D%20Eliot%20writes%2C%20%E2%80%9CI%20will%20show%20you%20fear%20in%20a%20handful%20of%20dust.%E2%80%9D https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2024/gundermantseli...
- bandrami 9mo ago
  One of the most annoying things I ever learned about T S Eliot is that he was born in Missouri and didn't move to the UK until his late 20s and just entirely made up that accent.
  - gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
    Some ai assisted takes here https://www.quora.com/Did-T-S-Eliot-retain-his-American-accent-after-he-moved-to-England https://www.quora.com/Did-T-S-Eliot-retain-his-American-acce... He's from a Boston Brahmin family so I doubt he had a real missouri accent to begin with Edit These are apparently from 1930s https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eliot.php https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eliot.php Where some Midwestern features are still present ? Especially here, after the 2m32s mark https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Eliot/Eliot-TS_24_Sweeney-Among-the-Nightingales-and-dissertation_Speech-Lab-Recordings_New-York_1935.mp3 https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Eliot/Eliot-TS...
  - FreakLegion 9mo ago
    He's a delightfully arch character, really. His penchant for camouflage is why Pound nicknamed him Old Possum. I can't recommend Hugh Kenner enough on the modernists. Eliot is one of the main characters of The Pound Era, and the star of The Invisible Poet. This is from The Pound Era: But Eliot was a great joker. After jugged hare at the Club ("Now there is jugged hare. That is a very English dish. Do you want to be English; or do you want to be safe?"); after the jugged hare and the evasions, he addressed his mind to the next theme. "Now; will you have a sweet; or ... cheese?" Even one not conversant with his letter to the Times on the declining estate of Stilton [Nov. 29, 1935, p. 15] would have understood that the countersign was cheese. "Why, cheese," said his guest; too lightly; one does not crash in upon the mysteries. There was a touch of reproof in his solicitude: "Are you sure? You can have ice cream, you know." (At the Garrick!) No, cheese. To which, "Very well. I fancy ... a fine Stilton." And as the waiter left for the Stilton, Eliot imparted the day's most momentous confidence: "Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first ... examined it." The Stilton stood encumbered with a swaddling band, girded about with a cincture, scooped out on top like a crater of the moon. It was placed in front of the Critic. (" Analysis and comparison," he had written some 40 years earlier, "Analysis and comparison, methodically, with sensitiveness, intelligence, curiosity, intensity of passion and infinite knowledge: all these are necessary to the great critic.") With the side of his knife blade he commenced tapping the circumference of the cheese, rotating it, his head cocked in a listening posture. It is not possible to swear that he was listening. He then tapped the inner walls of the crater. He then dug about with the point of his knife amid the fragments contained by the crater. He then said, "Rather past its prime. I am afraid I cannot recommend it." He was not always so. That was one of his Garrick personae. An acquaintance reports that at dinner in Eliot's home "an ordinary Cheddar" was "served without ceremony." The Stilton vanished. After awing silence the cheese board arrived, an assortment of some half-dozen, a few of them identifiably cheeses only in context. One resembled sponge cake spattered with chocolate sauce. Another, a pockmarked toadstool-yellow, exuded green flecks. Analysis and comparison: he took up again his knife, and each of these candidates he tapped, he prodded, he sounded. At length he segregated a ruddy specimen. "That is a rather fine Red Cheshire ... which you might enjoy." It was accepted; the decision was not enquired into, nor the intonation of you assessed. His attention was now bent on the toadstool-yellow specimen. This he tapped. This he prodded. This he poked. This he scraped. He then summoned the waiter. "What is that?" Apologetic ignorance of the waiter. "Could we find out?" Disappearance of the waiter. Two other waiters appear. "?" "--------." He assumed, at this silence, a mask of Holmesian exaltation: "Aha! An Anonymous Cheese!" He then took the Anonymous Cheese beneath his left hand, and the knife in his right hand, the thumb along the back of the blade as though to pare an apple. He then achieved with aplomb the impossible feat of peeling off a long slice. He ate this, attentively. He then transferred the Anonymous Cheese to the plate before him, and with no further memorable words proceeded without assistance to consume the entire Anonymous Cheese. That was November 19, 1956. Joyce was dead, Lewis blind, Pound imprisoned; the author of The Waste Land not really changed, unless in the intensity of his preference for the anonymous.
- wk_end 9mo ago
  I'd say, though it's certainly a debatable point, that it's precisely because the passages are deliberately written not to have a clear narrator that there is no "right" reading, but rather a multitude of interpretations of which Shaw's is as valid as many others. That's the attitude I'd bring to it, anyway.
- atombender 9mo ago
  Eliot's reading is fascinatingly horrible. I had the same traumatic experience hearing William Gibson reading Neuromancer, which comes across as a kind of parody. As for "is it right?" — well, it's obviously one person's interpretation, and I would say Eliot's own performance should count as Exhibit 1 in the age-old debate about whether the author is the best interpreter of their own work! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0
wk_end 9mo ago
The Waste Land has been one of my favourite pieces of writing for decades now; hearing it brought to life like this is incredible. Thank you.

tptacek 9mo ago

Have you ever listened to Eliot reading it? Just the worst. "Apreel is the crewellest month..." My thing here though is: this is awesome, Shaw's reading, but is it right? I feel like she's trying to make a coherent character reading at times out of passages deliberately written not to have a clear narrator. (I write this in the spirit of every thread needing a certain titration of not knowing what the hell they're talking about, as an invitation to those who do, and that inviting cluelessness is the purpose I serve here.)

gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
I don't know what I'm talking about either, but I'll also point to some scholars approaching TSE from the Econs angle https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2024/gundermantseliot.html#:~:text=In%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Waste%20Land%2C%E2%80%9D%20Eliot%20writes%2C%20%E2%80%9CI%20will%20show%20you%20fear%20in%20a%20handful%20of%20dust.%E2%80%9D https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2024/gundermantseli...
bandrami 9mo ago
One of the most annoying things I ever learned about T S Eliot is that he was born in Missouri and didn't move to the UK until his late 20s and just entirely made up that accent.
- gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
  Some ai assisted takes here https://www.quora.com/Did-T-S-Eliot-retain-his-American-accent-after-he-moved-to-England https://www.quora.com/Did-T-S-Eliot-retain-his-American-acce... He's from a Boston Brahmin family so I doubt he had a real missouri accent to begin with Edit These are apparently from 1930s https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eliot.php https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eliot.php Where some Midwestern features are still present ? Especially here, after the 2m32s mark https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Eliot/Eliot-TS_24_Sweeney-Among-the-Nightingales-and-dissertation_Speech-Lab-Recordings_New-York_1935.mp3 https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Eliot/Eliot-TS...
- FreakLegion 9mo ago
  He's a delightfully arch character, really. His penchant for camouflage is why Pound nicknamed him Old Possum. I can't recommend Hugh Kenner enough on the modernists. Eliot is one of the main characters of The Pound Era, and the star of The Invisible Poet. This is from The Pound Era: But Eliot was a great joker. After jugged hare at the Club ("Now there is jugged hare. That is a very English dish. Do you want to be English; or do you want to be safe?"); after the jugged hare and the evasions, he addressed his mind to the next theme. "Now; will you have a sweet; or ... cheese?" Even one not conversant with his letter to the Times on the declining estate of Stilton [Nov. 29, 1935, p. 15] would have understood that the countersign was cheese. "Why, cheese," said his guest; too lightly; one does not crash in upon the mysteries. There was a touch of reproof in his solicitude: "Are you sure? You can have ice cream, you know." (At the Garrick!) No, cheese. To which, "Very well. I fancy ... a fine Stilton." And as the waiter left for the Stilton, Eliot imparted the day's most momentous confidence: "Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first ... examined it." The Stilton stood encumbered with a swaddling band, girded about with a cincture, scooped out on top like a crater of the moon. It was placed in front of the Critic. (" Analysis and comparison," he had written some 40 years earlier, "Analysis and comparison, methodically, with sensitiveness, intelligence, curiosity, intensity of passion and infinite knowledge: all these are necessary to the great critic.") With the side of his knife blade he commenced tapping the circumference of the cheese, rotating it, his head cocked in a listening posture. It is not possible to swear that he was listening. He then tapped the inner walls of the crater. He then dug about with the point of his knife amid the fragments contained by the crater. He then said, "Rather past its prime. I am afraid I cannot recommend it." He was not always so. That was one of his Garrick personae. An acquaintance reports that at dinner in Eliot's home "an ordinary Cheddar" was "served without ceremony." The Stilton vanished. After awing silence the cheese board arrived, an assortment of some half-dozen, a few of them identifiably cheeses only in context. One resembled sponge cake spattered with chocolate sauce. Another, a pockmarked toadstool-yellow, exuded green flecks. Analysis and comparison: he took up again his knife, and each of these candidates he tapped, he prodded, he sounded. At length he segregated a ruddy specimen. "That is a rather fine Red Cheshire ... which you might enjoy." It was accepted; the decision was not enquired into, nor the intonation of you assessed. His attention was now bent on the toadstool-yellow specimen. This he tapped. This he prodded. This he poked. This he scraped. He then summoned the waiter. "What is that?" Apologetic ignorance of the waiter. "Could we find out?" Disappearance of the waiter. Two other waiters appear. "?" "--------." He assumed, at this silence, a mask of Holmesian exaltation: "Aha! An Anonymous Cheese!" He then took the Anonymous Cheese beneath his left hand, and the knife in his right hand, the thumb along the back of the blade as though to pare an apple. He then achieved with aplomb the impossible feat of peeling off a long slice. He ate this, attentively. He then transferred the Anonymous Cheese to the plate before him, and with no further memorable words proceeded without assistance to consume the entire Anonymous Cheese. That was November 19, 1956. Joyce was dead, Lewis blind, Pound imprisoned; the author of The Waste Land not really changed, unless in the intensity of his preference for the anonymous.
wk_end 9mo ago
I'd say, though it's certainly a debatable point, that it's precisely because the passages are deliberately written not to have a clear narrator that there is no "right" reading, but rather a multitude of interpretations of which Shaw's is as valid as many others. That's the attitude I'd bring to it, anyway.
atombender 9mo ago
Eliot's reading is fascinatingly horrible. I had the same traumatic experience hearing William Gibson reading Neuromancer, which comes across as a kind of parody. As for "is it right?" — well, it's obviously one person's interpretation, and I would say Eliot's own performance should count as Exhibit 1 in the age-old debate about whether the author is the best interpreter of their own work! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0

wk_end 9mo ago

The Waste Land has been one of my favourite pieces of writing for decades now; hearing it brought to life like this is incredible. Thank you.