SLSL Anthologized Entropy & Critical Masses

[Bahia Quasimodo]

"Various critics have done me the honor to interpret
the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary
world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit
of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of
my personal and wholly insignificant grouse against
life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling." 
                                 -Eliot, T.S. 
                  
It is possible to read Eliot's Wasteland entirely in
the personal terms Eliot affirms as a symbolic
expression of an intensely felt sense of personal
frustration and emptiness. Yet, in doing so, we need
not reject the readings that *impose* a public context
on the poem. 

Why do we read "The Wasteland" and not thousands of
other poems that were published in English that year?
Is it simply better than most of the others?  OK,
maybe it is, but at this point, I think it is safe to
say, that the reason we read Eliot's Wasteland and not
some other poem is that it has been anthologized. It
has been anthologized because Eliot's Wasteland,
critics argue, is not only about his personal sense of
frustration and emptiness, the poem gives symbolic
form to a widely diffused dissatisfaction with the
dehumanizing tendencies of modern life. 

So, like Henry Adams, a book that was not read for
decades but has suddenly become a best seller, a must
read, an anthologized classic, The Wasteland
fascinates us because we are interested in the ideas
in the poem. The same is true of Entropy. Pynchon can
provide his reading of it and we recognize tha this
reading of it has merit, but try as he may, he can't
wrstle the story away from the critics and the
readers. It's too late. Entropy has been anthologized.
Pynchon has been anthologized and whatever he says
about his stories now, he only one more reader of an
anthologized story. 



"What a poem means is as much what it means to others
as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the
course of time a poet may become merely a reader in
respect to his own works, forgetting his original
meaning, or without forgetting, merely changing." 

		-T.S. Eliot




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