ELIOT, T.S. [Introduction by Mary Karr].
The Waste Land and Other Writings.
New York: The Modern Library , 2001.
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First modern library of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Writings; inscribed by Mary Karr to American journalist Bill Safire
First Modern Library edition of this compilation of Eliot's major works. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by Mary Karr, who contributed the introductory essay "How to Read 'The Waste Land' So it Alters Your Soul Rather Than Just Addling Your Head", "To Bill Safire: Thank you for your words. Your pal, T.S. Eliot [which she has crossed out] Mary Karr." The recipient, William Safire was an important American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign for the 1960 Presidential race, and supported him again in 1968. After Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a speechwriter for him and Spiro Agnew. He authored several political columns in addition to his weekly column “On Language” in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death and authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land expresses with great power the disillusionment and disgust of the period after World War I. In a series of fragmentary vignettes, loosely linked by the legend of the search for the Grail, it portrays a sterile world of panicky fears and barren lusts, and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption. The depiction of spiritual emptiness in the secularized city--the decay of urbs aeterna (the "eternal city")--is not a simple contrast of the heroic past with the degraded present; it is rather a timeless, simultaneous awareness of moral grandeur and moral evil. The poem initially met with controversy as its complex and erudite style was alternately denounced for its obscurity and praised for its modernism.
The Waste Land and Other Writings.
$400.00
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