Extreme Elimination Challenge: Literary Edition

The question on the table:

Do I still have my copy of T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land?

Let me get on the record as saying that I have, sort of, read The Waste Land. More accurately, I have run my eyes over all the words in the poem. I read it in college, towards the end of a semester. I will admit, freely, that I did not give it the attention that any piece of serious literature—especially poetry—deserves.

That said, I hated The Waste Land. I hated it with a hate that was sure and true. Not only did I hate it, I felt insulted by it. By the time I was finished with it, I had decided that Elliot was, in fact, having us on. My working theory on The Waste Land is that Elliot was a dick with an inflated sense of self who was gleaning a sick form of entertainment from watching the dopes that were stupid enough to slog through his epic struggle to ascribe to it a meaning that it did not have.

BUT

When I finished reading it, exhausted, unbathed, and seriously annoyed, I promised myself that I would read it again within 10 years. “Why,” you ask? Because I might be wrong. Because even though they might not be smarter, there are people out there who are better-educated and harder-working than I who value and appreciate it. Because Elliot also wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” which is a genius little snapshot of the great tragedy of a small man and his small concerns. Because before I call one of the most important pieces of 20th century literature a horrific insult to letters and human intellect, I think I need to give it a second chance, if not to like it, then at least to appreciate it.

I used to hate tomatoes, after all, and now I view a salad of ripe summer tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and a lovely soft cheese as evidence that there might somewhere be a benevolent god. It’s important to revisit things periodically to see if they are as you left them. (Of course, if the little fucker is as awful as I remember it, then at least I can say I gave it a proper chance and thus that I really mean it when I call it the sticky leavings of a terrible literary masturbation.)

So, why now? Well, we’re right around the halfway point of the 10 year deadline, so it seems a reasonably good time. Right now, I have very little going on in the way of intellectual challenges, so I have the brain space and abundant time to devote to my little adventure. Plus, I don’t know, the universe has gone to considerable effort of late to make me re-examine things that I thought I understood. I figure, in for the penny, in for the pound.

I’ll keep you posted.