Rick: I further note that Vladimir Nabokov, who knew a thing or two about

beautiful language, was not an Eliot fan. He came across Eliot late in life

and was underwhelmed. (This is from memory; the reference is somewhere in

Alfred Appel’s “Annotated ‘Lolita’,” which I no longer possess.)

…Although I further recall that Nabokov seems to have admired James Joyce,

the second great literary poseur of the late not-much-lamented 20th century,

the prose equivalent of Eliot (though at least he didn’t plagiarize). Ah,

well, as you say, Homer nods.

There is some great cultural divide here between the America-born and the

English-born. Leaving aside Anthony Burgess, who was a very odd man, it is

rare to find an English-born person who gives a fig for either Eliot or

Joyce; yet Americans drool over them. The following is a transcript of a

conversation I had some years ago with a literary gent in England.