> On 15 Jan 98, "SJHOLDEN.BSU_DOM"
<S.J.Holden@qmw.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > A few years ago (c. 1991) Penguin published a
comic-book version of TS Eliot's
> > 'The Wasteland.' A strange enough choice for a
comic book, but even stranger
> > was that it had been made into a hard-boiled
narrative complete with a PI
> > called Marlow (or Marlowe). Did anyone else on
the list ever read this, or is
> > my memory playing extremely unkind tricks on
me?
>
> Must be a consensual hallucination. Actually, it's
not Eliot's
> _Wasteland_, but a very witty piss-take of that sort
of thing [spits,
> off].
>
> It's by Martin Rowson and is called _The Waste Land_
(London: Pengugin,
> 1990).
I sat down with a friend of mine and re-read this the other
day,
and I'd forgotten how good it is. It helped that late last
year
I'd seen both _The Maltese Falcon_ and _The Big Sleep_ again,
since
those two films are the primary sources for the HB/noir
element in
the comic. It's funniest if you know well both these films,
_The
Wasteland_ itself, and something about the making of the
poem
(Pound's influence, for example). Being able to read Greek
and
Latin helps a bit too. :-)
I wouldn't call it a `piss-take'; I'd even hesitate to call
it a
parody; it's more of a tribute than anything else, albeit a
very
funny one.
Note that there are two editions. The American edition
(sorry, I
forget the publisher, but I can look it up if necessary) is
the
unexpurgated one; the British edition, published by Penguin,
had
a bunch of changes made to remove direct quotes from _The
Wasteland_
because they couldn't get rights to do this outside of the
US.
Both editions were around the same price, as I recall, in
the
standard trade paperback price range.
cjs
Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite mist,
software reverberates
Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible
folly.
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