(1) T.S. ELIOT – THE WASTELAND (1922)

“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

Apocalyptic poet. Also one of the most name-dropped poets, including in Catch-22 (“Name me a poet who makes money!”)

Also Old Possum, as in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Yes – T.S. Eliot is the origin of the musical Cats.

Also – the Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-ah! Well, not quite. That is the Lord Humungus from Mad Max: The Road Warrior. But Eliot was the Poet of The Wasteland.

It would be interesting to adapt The Wasteland in the style of Mad Max. Except it would involve a lot less BDSM leather kink and a lot more mind-screw.

It would also be interesting to adapt The Wasteland into horror – it verges on it already. That fear in a handful of dust for one. For another, the titular theme of the mythic Waste Land as post-apocalyptic setting without redemption or resurrection – “That corpse you planted last year in your garden. Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” The Wasteland as zombie apocalypse, perhaps? Or slasher film?

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”

Even The Wasteland is laid waste in The Hollow Men, a more straightforward and shorthand poem of the same themes. Shout-out also to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the third of the Eliot holy trinity. The central bathos is there in the title – the juxtaposition of the lofty “love-song” with the commonplace and ludicrous banality of the protagonist himself.

“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)