He has done more than any other [contemporary] English poet to make this age conscious of itself, and, in being conscious, apprehensive." Jewel Spears Brooker expressed a similar assessment in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Perhaps without having intended to do so, Eliot diagnosed the malaise of his generation and indeed of Western civilization in the twentieth century."
A man whose poetry sought to explore elusive subjects such as personal identity, fulfillment, and perception, Thomas Stearns Eliot was an enigmatic figure. Accused of being distant, condescending, unnecessarily obtuse and erudite, he was at the same time an affable individual who loved whoopee cushions and joke cigars, and was a devoted follower of Sherlock Holmes. Responding to a request for biographical information from his alma mater, Harvard University, Eliot wrote in 1935, "I prefer sherry (light dry) to cocktails. I . . . like such games as poker, rummy and slippery Ann for low stakes. I like certain very simple and humane kinds of practical joke. . . . I never bet, because I never win.
