"A. David Moody" wrote:
>
>
> But in the1950s there was nothing that came anything near it as an attempt
> to see <The Cantos> steadily and to see them whole.  It was a brilliant,
> dazzling, exhilarating improvisation.  ("Lousy" is definitely not the word
> for it.)
>

I agree with the first part -- and I think my post indicated as much.
Without his book I'd probably not have kept up struggling with the
Cantos. And since some of its faults are the same faults as I regularly
manifest on e-lists -- a certain unearned arrogance :-) -- I suppose I
should qualify my diction, i.e., find a better word than "lousy." But
even so, I dog-eared the damn thing and virtually wore out the binding
back in the late '50s trying to squeeze more help out of it than it
gave. It was so porous that it was possible to wonder whether the author
himself really knew much about the poem. But if it was a six-week effort
by a grad student I can understand.

Someone at the time also compared it to leading a visitor to the door of
a temple and then slugging him for not already being inside said temple.
The next book I read by Kenner was his book on Eliot, and I was utterly
amazed at the time by both the change of tone _and_ by the more detailed
discussion.

Carrol

> David Moody