Hidden Name & Complex Fate

Ralph Ellison reads an excerpt from his essay, Hidden Name & Complex Fate, tracing his childhood and community environment, to his first encounter with T.S. Eliot and The Wasteland.

WCW takes a shot at Old Possum

"I'm glad you like his verse; but I'm warning you, the only reason it doesn't smell is that it's synthetic. Maybe I'm wrong, but I distrust that bastard more than any writer I know in the world today. He can write, granted, but it's like walking into a church to me."


- William Carlos Williams writing to James Laughlin regarding T.S. Eliot.


Williams, of course, turned out to be right about Eliot. A euro-centric cultist of the first order, Eliot was not only a royalist but a racist and fascist sympathizer.

The pessimism of The Wasteland was met with condemnation by some and admiration by others. It inspired resistance as well. Among the most successful examples of this would be the joy expressed in Hart Crane's masterpiece, The Bridge.

The above quote was taken from The Way It Wasn't, an "auto-bug-offery" by the late James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions.