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The Waste Land might be the most pretentious thing I've ever read. It just oozes self-importance. I've never seen any work that could be described as great that has an overt peacocking quality to it.

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If you think that's bad, try Byron. "Overt peacocking" has been a thing in poetry for centuries. The hiphop of our era is an example.

I have the opposite impression of Eliot though. I thought self-erasure was a core principle of his poetics.

I feel the same way about both Joyce and Eliot: they make their readers do a lot of the interpretative work that other authors do on behalf of their readers. Some people enjoy doing that work, and some don’t. I think the latter group gets frustrated when the former does that work and then proclaim it as the highest form of genius. Sure, it’s genius, but it’s not _more_ genius than certain approachable prose/poetry, it’s just a different kind.

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