Published as war broke out in 1939, TS Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats outsold The Waste Land. The 1980s saw a West End smash. Will the new film speak to us today?
When Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats appeared in the first week of October 1939, it might have been thought that its author had lost the plot. It was only 17 years since TS Eliot had published The Waste Land, his cryptic lament for the moral and psychic disintegration that both caused and followed the first world war. Now, a mere month into renewed hostilities in Europe, here was Eliot, the man with more claim to cultural authority than almost anyone living, wasting his time (not to mention everyone else’s) with light verse about cats.
If Eliot’s cat book spoke to the terror of the times, it also mapped the continuing disintegration of his personal life
Related: Cats looks mighty weird, but that’s why TS Eliot would have approved | Hephzibah Anderson
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