When T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, it put the thirty-four-year-old author on a path to worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize. 鈥淏ut,鈥� as Jed Rasula writes, 鈥�The Waste Land is not only a poem: it names an event, like a tornado or an earthquake. Its publication was a watershed, marking a before and after. It was a poem that unequivocally declared that the ancient art of poetry had become modern.鈥� In What the Thunder Said, Rasula tells the story of how The Waste Land changed poetry forever and how this cultural bombshell served as a harbinger of modernist revolution in all the arts, from abstraction in visual art to atonality in music.
From its famous opening, 鈥淎pril is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land,鈥� to its closing Sanskrit mantra, 鈥淪hantih shantih shantih,鈥� The Waste Land combined singular imagery, experimental technique, and dense allusions, boldly fulfilling Ezra Pound鈥檚 injunction to 鈥渕ake it new.鈥� What the Thunder Said traces the origins, reception, and enduring influence of the poem, from its roots in Wagnerism and French Symbolism to the way its strangely beguiling music continues to inspire readers. Along the way, we learn about Eliot鈥檚 storied circle, including Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, and Bertrand Russell, and about poets like Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, whose innovations have proven as consequential as those of the 鈥渕en of 1914.鈥�
Filled with fresh insights and unfamiliar anecdotes, What the Thunder Said recovers the explosive force of the twentieth century鈥檚 most influential poem.
Awards and Recognition
- A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
"Provide[s] valuable context for Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece."鈥擬ichael Dirda, Washington Post
"Stimulating. . . . Rasula's account wonderfully traces the evolution of literary thought, and his syntheses feel fresh and exciting. The result is a refreshing reappraisal of a classic."鈥�Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[What the Thunder Said is] adding more weight to the headstone that marks Eliot."鈥擩ames Matthew Wilson, New Criterion
"The book demonstrates [Rasula’s] uncommon ability to compress highly complicated artistic, cultural, and intellectual histories into accessible and enjoyable prose."鈥擠aniel Kraft, On the Seawall
"Filled with fresh insights and unfamiliar anecdotes, What the Thunder Said recovers the explosive force of the twentieth century’s most influential poem."鈥擬arshal Zeringue, Campaign for the American Reader
"Rasula makes the case for The Waste Land‘s lasting revolutionary impact in his engaging and insightful, if occasionally discursive, study."鈥擯eter Keough, Arts Fuse
"The book is much more than its title suggests, sympathetically conveying a whole complex literary world marked by revolutionary intensity."鈥�Paradigm Explorer
"[What the Thunder Said] confirms Rasula's position as the US's most wide-ranging and aculturally astute historian of modernism."鈥�Choice
"What the Thunder Said is an energetic book bristling with ideas and arguments."鈥擩ason Harding, American Literary History
鈥淥nly a critic with Jed Rasula鈥檚 encyclopedic mind, perfect pitch, and remarkable gift for narrative could have produced this astonishing book. For Rasula, The Waste Land is not a poem to be explicated yet again but 鈥榓n explosive event鈥欌�攐ne at the crossroads of modernist currents that was to change the course of poetry forever.鈥濃��Marjorie Perloff, author of Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics
鈥淛ed Rasula鈥檚 ceaselessly fascinating etudes in, about, before, and beyond The Waste Land make it new, and news, again. What the Thunder Said provides kaleidoscopic commentaries not just on Eliot, but Pound, Wagner, and Nietzsche, along with cameos by Mina Loy and myriad luminous and overlooked others. As always with Rasula, the style is pure delight: the music of intellect dancing with time.鈥�鈥�Charles Bernstein, author of Pitch of Poetry
鈥淎n impressively written, assiduously argued new approach to The Waste Land, demonstrating that, even after a century, there remains much, much more to be said about this epoch-making poem.鈥�鈥擜nthony Cuda, author of The Passions of Modernism: Eliot, Yeats, Woolf, and Mann
鈥淛ed Rasula鈥檚 lively and personal road trip through modernism, taking us from Wagner to The Waste Land and its long aftermath, yields many pleasures. He wears his considerable learning lightly while telling a vivid story of the connections and influences, affairs and occasions, and reactions and retractions that make the modernist movement so striking to us today.鈥濃��Tim Armstrong, Royal Holloway, University of London
