Take My Wife Please!

a newly published volume of Eliot’s letters threatens to dispel myths that the poet was a Jew hater, wife-torturer.  times article about newly published volume leaves lingering doubts about such claims.  with little revelation–aside from oh shit, that’s right, TS Eliot is distantly responsible for CATS– the article simply contains loads more examples of eliot being a total douche:

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In private papers written in the 1960s, he wrote: “To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.”

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that sounds like a pretty awful marriage, dude.  also?  the parts where you talk about killing her and/or yourself are not so sympathetic.  thankfully there are tiny gems in the times’ 11 pages of excerpts:
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To Virginia Woolf

7 May 1924, Milestone Cottages

How tired I am of being supposed to edit the Criterion, how tired of the very word Criterion! And yet you would be surprised how many substantial personages and men of weight, Oxford dons and grave statesmen, come and tell me what a lucky young man I am at my age to have a review to “do as I like with”! Do as I like! As if there were any satisfaction in doing as one likes with editing a review in the fragmentary evening hours given at the cost of sleep, society, recreation and neglect of private affairs.