Article: Understanding "The Waste Land"; Why Eliot's famous poem resists easy interpretation.(BOOKS)

Byline: William H. Pritchard, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

What more, at this late date, is there to be said about T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," the mostfamous poem of the last century and only 17 years short of celebrating its 100th birthday? An English scholar of modernism, Lawrence Rainey, has brought out not one, but two books that aim to help us put Eliot's creation more clearly in our sights.

But who are "we" - how many are there likely to sit down and read once more this monumental example of modernist difficulty and controversy? Mr. Rainey rightly suggests, in his preface to "Revisiting The Waste Land," that most readers will have been first ...

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