Reading The Waste Land from the Bottom Up (PDF)

Allyson Booth is Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy.

"A brilliant conception, Reading the Waste Land from the Bottom Up is a triumph of scholarly commitment and hard work. The book will immediately become an indispensable resource for all who teach and read the indispensable poem. It is at once an attentive line-by-line reading aid and an act of ingenious and renewing interpretation." - Michael Levenson, William B. Christian Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA

"Allyson Booth's Reading The Waste Land from the Bottom Up is a perfect book for readers who have been intimidated by Eliot's formidable poem. The purpose of the book, which replicates her classroom strategy, is to clarify the relevance of selected allusions. The tone, which is personal and casual, is caught in the catchy title. Reading "from the bottom up" is reading via allusions, a delightful and illuminating methodology." - Jewel Spears Brooker, Professor Emerita of Literature, Eckerd College, USA

"This thorough, beautifully written and effectively organized companion to The Waste Land renders the footnotes of Eliot's poem - the most notoriously elusive parts of a difficult modernist work - surprisingly accessible to a broad range of readers. In Allyson Booth's capable hands, Eliot's sources become new entry ways into the poem, freeing us as readers to engage in what she aptly describes as 'an exercise in marveling.'" - Laura E. Tanner, Professor of English, Boston College, USA