It should be rewarding, in this context, to read an insightful note on Eliot's The Waste Land.
Please read pp. 68-73 of
 
The modernism handbook
Philip Tew, Alex Murray
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009
 
"The Waste Land challenges the reader to fashion patterns of meaning out of its radically disorienting forms and diverse intellectual contents....[The] modern poet recognizes the need to replace traditional realist models of representation with an avant-garde Modernist poetics that will 'dislocate' language into meaning by an indirect process of association."
 
http://books.google.com/books?id=CpOa5vsGx34C&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
CR
 
From: Peter Dillane <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 2:03 AM
Subject: Re: Patricia Sloane's Bleistein book (was Re: Patricia Sloane's Key to 'The Waste Land')

Hi Carrol,

ok leaving aside that equitone is closer to pig latin than a challenging anagram and I wonder if Eliot talked that parle ( Americans on the list will have to enlighten me whether that seems likely ) more to the point. If we say hidden meanings are irrelevant  to the readingness what do you think about Ricks' extended analysis of the name Mrs Equitone in terms of tone as it reflects national identity, foreignness and so on. Is that similarly not helpful? and for the same reasons?

Cheers Pete

----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 4:09 PM
Subject: Re: Patricia Sloane's Bleistein book (was Re: Patricia Sloane's Key to 'The Waste Land')

> Finding anagrams sounds as off the wall as numerological studies of Milton. I was never much of an admirer of Douglas Bush, but he had a great title for a review of one of those books: "Calculus Wracked Him." Since for three years a was a cryptanalyst for NSA, I picked up some rigorous criteria for accepting any decipherment. The main one is tht there must be a c  control . You demonstrate in just a few sentences that there is no possible control for any finding of "hidden meanings" in anarams in Eliot. //The problem with all dicoveries of "hidden meanings in any work is their irrelevancy to reading the work.// There's a person on the Austen list who has, apparently,written a book showing that each of Austen's novels  is really a private code telling a completely different story from the "visible" story. Dull. Dull. Dull. In the same category are those conspiracy theories that see 9/11 as being a secret plot by Bush or the CIA or Little  Orphan Annie. And the plot always grows bigger and bigger. Now it has to include Obama & Clinton, since they must have foundout about it but are keeping the secret for dark and hidden reasons. Wonderful!
>
> Carrol
>