The Waste Basket

By Mel C. Thompson

The central conceit of the book is that T.S. Eliot is forwarded in time to 1990s San Francisco where his is forced to wander the degenerate streets looking for love (and meaning?) - but is left predictably dissatisfied.

The "author" attempts to follow, to a certain degree, the styles (and occasionally the words) and attitudes which he imagines Eliot would have had in such a situation; and he frames the thing in a layout that calls to mind some elements of "The Waste Land" and "Prufrock" (a couple of Eliot's most prominent works).

But the work comes off as more of a fusion than an imitation, as often the author's old rant poetry style (reminiscent of the 1990s San Francisco poetry scene) wins out over Eliot's famed delicacy and tact. And so the classiness of the Eliot era of poetry is strangely intertwined with the harsh, bitter and preachy tones of the author.

Whether the work succeeds or fails in what it attempts to do has become beside the point, as the work keeps appearing in print somehow, whether through the author printing out books or other publishers reproducing the project in part, or in whole, in their own publications. The tiny trickle of demand for this literary experiment never quite fades away entirely; and so the production in various formats continues.

The book existed in all formats but paperback until now. It started out as it's life as only "The Waste Basket" chapbook, a twenty-page, folded-over-and-stapled affair that was distributed to perhaps ten or twenty people. Then it wound up as an ebook on several platforms where it got a few dozen random downloads. The work also served the "author" well throughout the later stages of his live performing "career." Lately it appears as an audiobook too. (There will probably not be time, energy or money to get this out as a hardback, but that remains on the bucket list.)

The text itself was expanded by the author doing a similar fusion-work with the "Prufrock" poem (which he renamed "The Lost Song of A. Milfred Bluefrock"). And also an indefensibly vindictive and harsh rant called "An Endless Irrational Epilogue" was also added (along with assorted little prefaces and long, self-indulgent dedications and biographical data).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0F9KHJ2HD
• ISBN13: 9798284750223
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 54 Pages
• Weight: 0.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"