Cultural Depictions of T. S. Eliot - Literature (etc.)

Literature (etc.)

• In 1941, Henry Reed published Chard Whitlow, an intelligent and witty satire on Burnt Norton. Eliot wrote, "Most parodies of one's own work strike one as very poor. In fact, one is apt to think one could parody oneself much better. (As a matter of fact, some critics have said that I have done so.) But there is one which deserves the success it has had, Henry Reed's Chard Whitlow."
• "The Waste Land" is referenced in The Long Goodbye by detective novelist Raymond Chandler.
• In the autobiographical A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken's admiration for Eliot's poetry lends credibility in Vanauken's eyes to Christianity and plays a part, along with letters from C. S. Lewis, in his conversion.
• A favorite of present-day Christians is "Choruses from 'The Rock'," a poem decrying what Eliot saw as the decadence of Western thought from the sublime (the Word as the Revelation of God, wisdom, life) to the humdrum (information, living).
• Novelist Dean Koontz often refers to Eliot: his 2004 novel The Taking is heavily influenced by Eliot's work and quotes extensively from it.
• On September 20, 2005, a series of unpublished letters from Eliot and an author-inscribed first edition of The Waste Land plus many related items were sold at auction for nearly $438,000.
• The poet Wendy Cope published two parodies of Eliot, 'A Nursery Rhyme (as it might have been written by T. S. Eliot)' and 'Waste Land Limericks' in her collection Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986). The latter poem reduces 'The Waste Land' to five limericks, each corresponding to a section of Eliot's poem.
• Stephen King's Dark Tower series makes references to The Waste Land. The third novel is even titled The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands.
• In Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 novel Galápagos, the book's invention, Mandarax, quotes Eliot: "In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas, To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk Among whispers..."
• In Catch 22 he is mentioned when Col. Cargill says "name one poet who makes money." Ex. PFC. Wintergreen calls him without identifying himself and says "T. S. Eliot." There is later a T. S. Eliot phone tag between other Colonel and Generals.
• In Lemony Snicket's book The Austere Academy, the Baudelaire orphans attend Alfred J. Prufrock Preparatory School. In the eleventh book, The Grim Grotto, T. S. Eliot is mentioned as being a better poet than Edgar Guest.
• Martin Rowson has published a graphic novel of The Wasteland written in the style of a Raymond Chandler detective story.