Lawrence S. Rainey

I suppose the question with a book like this is whether it increases your enjoyment and deepens your understanding of the annotated work. I can't honestly say that it does--if anything the annotations made me feel how far I will always be from ever understanding this allusive and elusive poem. The contemporary prose selections--especially the Dial articles--were especially interesting to me, though I was surprised to see the essay on the Metaphysical poets, as there was a time when no show more English major could have gotten through college without reading that one at least two or three times. show less

Eliot's "The Waste Land" is one of the most important poems of the twentieth century. Here the text is presented, with Eliot's annotations, the editor Lawrence Rainey's annotations, images, and copious background material. The poem is what the poem is, if you like it, you'll like it, if you don't you'll don't. (If you don't like it, read H. P. Lovecraft's riposte "Waste Paper.") The editors annotations and images are fine, but the presentation is awful. Instead of footnotes on the same page show more as the text, or margin notes on the same page (like the Norton Annotated Books), you have to turn to two unwieldy annotation endnote collections. The introduction is very good, the collation is a goldmine for bibliographers. The "Contemporary Prose" of Eliot is superfluous, boring, and unnecessary, adding nothing substantial to the poem or the foregoing scholarly apparatus. It would have been much more informative to have various rough drafts of "The Waste Land" and Ezra Pound's comments and changes (see The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound). I have not compared this annotated version of "The Waste Land" to the Norton Critical Edition, but I was not happy with the layout and much of the material. A better annotated version could be done, though this would be an important scholarly contribution to that effort. show less

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Rainey's annotations are generally helpful, but occasionally they run a little long. The contemporary prose was a little bit of a let down in the sense that it didn't really illuminate the poem as show more much as I was hoping; however, they were interesting in their own right as standalone pieces. show less