Comments on: A Peaceful, but Very Interesting Pursuit

By: Aldene

Aldene — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 23:10:17 +0000

I relate completely to Eliot’s desire to stay at the bank. I had a film director tell me once that the best job for a screenwriter to have was as a mechanic; it was intellectually demanding enough to keep someone challenged, but left enough creative energy at the end of the day to manage to do some writing. Eliot’s bank job probably provided him with some real-life connections that stood him in good stead in his writing, unlike hanging around with a bunch of other writers; where’s the inspiration in that?

By: BlogDog

BlogDog — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:49:27 +0000

“Poring over” not “pouring over.”

By: Mike The Knife

Mike The Knife — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:25:12 +0000

“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Gustave Flaubert

By: Hiten Bhaya

Hiten Bhaya — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:30:07 +0000

The anagram of T.S.Eliot,is ‘Is to let’ things be as they are. Or it
can also be ‘Toilets’—depends on which way one is inclined.!

By: tatiana.larina

tatiana.larina — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:10:02 +0000

TSE wouldn’t take a job with Murry because Murry couldn’t guarantee more than two years. How many people today in the banking (or other corporate) world can be certain of that?

Also, the writers mentioned above who had non-literary jobs most of their lives tend to be mostly poets. Those who weren’t, like Kafka, practically killed themselves trying to reconcile their day job and their evening job. Try to compose “War and Peace” in your head as you drive to work.

By: Eats Wombats

Eats Wombats — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:48:45 +0000

Pouring over actuarial tables? I don’t think so.

At Swim Two Boys by Irish writer Jamie O’Neill was composed over many years working as a hospital porter in London. It’s an outstanding work.

By: Rob T.

Rob T. — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:45:49 +0000

Brilliant comment, grandhotelabyss, regardless of whether I was included in your sights.

Indeed, reading the “actuarial wastelander” condescending to the likes of Byron and Shelley is rather like hearing Salieri remark patronizingly on the works of Mozart.

By: Pedro E. F.

Pedro E. F. — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:44:12 +0000

He never knew Italian and said so in his pamphlet on Dante. He could read Dante, at first with the aid of a facing-page translation, but had a very rough idea of the phonetics of what he was reading. Of Sanskrit he had a smattering at best.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:26:03 +0000

Maybe your next piece can be on the advantages of writing in prison.

By: grandhotelabyss

grandhotelabyss — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:14:12 +0000

God, these comments! The self-hatred of the corporate-age literati knows no bounds. “Get a real job!”–feels like I’m back in the ‘burbs. Where, incidentally, bookish adolescents used to read Eliot as a species of graveyard poetry because we weren’t emotionally or intellectually prepared for those feckless under-employed miscreants Shelley and Byron to whom the actuarial wastelander liked to condescend. In other words, take this job and shove it.