Not pedantry exactly, but I thought you lot would appreciate this

[RosaIsRed]

From a 1925 review of TS Eliot's poetry, published in the Guardian's Eliot booklet yesterday.

'Some critics find learning in The Waste Land, but we cannot think that an acquaintance with The Golden Bough, Verlaine, Nerval, St Augustine, Marvell, Kyd, Virgil and Dante displays any deep erudition.'

Don't you wish you knew what the author of the review would regard as erudite?!

I heard an interview with Jeffrey Archer yesterday (I was trapped in the car) in which he suggested that he has 'been compared to Dolstoyevsky and Tolstoy'. At which I couldn't help myself yelling 'yes but not favourably!!!!!!'

FFS!

PMSL Captainmummy. There is something appealing about his shameless self-promotion though. He could have been the model for Mr Toad in the Wind in the Willows.

It's in the sniffy nuance of "acquaintance", though, is it not, Rosa?

I feel a Closing of the American Mind moment coming on, though. I was looking at the Vanity Fair pics in the Nat'l Portrait Gallery the other day and feeling quite despairing about how intellectual effort has been dumped for flash. The early issues were completely charming (and rather erudite - well that was why they were charming ).

You are right, Bink, but he (I feel the anonymous reviewer is a he, somehow) doesn't go so far as to qualify 'acquaintance' with 'superficial' although it is certainly implied. But the difference between 'acquaintance with' and 'knowledge of' is a tricky one.