The Waste Land, Matthew Hollis
The Waste Land, Matthew Hollis
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The Waste Land
A Biography of a Poem

Author: Matthew Hollis

Narrator: Matthew Hollis

Unabridged: 16 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/14/2023


Synopsis

A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot's celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.

Renowned as one of the world's greatest poems, The Waste Land has been said to describe the moral decay of a world after war and the search for meaning in a meaningless era. It has been labeled the most truthful poem of its time; it has been branded a masterful fake. A century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot's enigmatic masterpiece remains one of the most influential works ever written, and yet one of the most mysterious.

In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. Presenting a mosaic of historical fragments, diaries, dynamic literary criticism, and illuminating new research, he reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists—of Ezra Pound, who edited it; of Vivien Eliot, who sustained it; and of T. S. Eliot himself, whose private torment is woven into the seams of the work. The result is an unforgettable story of lives passing in opposing directions and the astounding literary legacy they would leave behind.

About Matthew Hollis

Matthew Hollis is the author of Ground Water, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, and Now All Roads Lead to France: A Life of Edward Thomas, winner of the Costa Biography Award and a Sunday Times Biography of the Year. He is the poetry editor at Faber & Faber, London, and lives in the United Kingdom.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Peter

The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis. Give me a clap at Medium (Now with jokes) - [URL not allowed]@peterseanbradle/b... I really want to like The Waste Land. I love some of its parts. I love "April is the cruelest month" and "Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as yo......more

Goodreads review by Steve

Outstanding book on Eliot's great poem that strikes a perfect balance between biography (or biographies) and a deep critical dive into the poem itself. I turned to Hollis' book after getting bogged down in Robert Crawford's exhaustive (and exhausting) 2 volume biography on Eliot. (I didn't make it p......more

Goodreads review by Ryan

A 380 page book with 300 pages of padding. As with Hollis’s superb book on Edward Thomas, the best bits are all about the heat of composition and editing.......more

Goodreads review by David

A commentary on the making of The Waste Land against the dailiness (and struggles of Eliot’s life). Above all it’s about the incredible collaboration between Eliot and Pound. The rhythm of biography and writing is well handled. But while it is a biographical study, I think at times it gets too “dail......more