This stimulating and provocative book focuses on the failure to connect that T.S. Eliot saw setting in during the seventeenth century. With special attention to The Waste Land and 'Gerontion,' G. Douglas Atkins shows that Eliot roundly satirized modern misunderstandings and urges readers to make the connections that the "wastelanders" fail to make. Thus, a new approach to reading Eliot opens up, based on suggestions he himself made in the prose and enacted in the poetry."Riddled with such dense and literary food for thought in its entirety, T. S. Eliot and the Failure to Connect is an exceptional book in that it really does hone in on the subject matter of its title. I've read a number of books on literary criticism that pertain to do the same, yet do everything BUT. To be sure, having reached the end of the book, I almost felt compelled to start reading it all over again; and there really aren't that many books within the genre I can say that about. Indeed, if you like T. S. Eliot, or are in anyway (still) perplexed with regards the complex, albeit sublime The Waste Land, then this book comes highly, highly recommended." - David Marx