

T.S. Eliot's day job at Lloyd's Bank - gruseom
http://therumpus.net/2012/01/a-peaceful-but-very-interesting-pursuit/

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pg
Someone should write a book just about the day jobs (and sources of income
generally) of famous people. It's hard to imagine an aspect of history that's
more overlooked.

~~~
gruseom
Apparently when Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize, one of his colleagues
at the insurance firm said "What – Wally a poet?"

<http://www.kevinstevens.net/writings/wallacestevens.htm>

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cobralibre
I would perhaps not infer too much about Tom Eliot's feelings towards his day
job from a few letters to a worried mother an ocean away and a polite
resignation letter. Even Eliot's letter to Ezra Pound, which expresses quite a
different view of his work at the bank ("Of course I want to leave the
Bank..."), must be read with some suspicion because of Pound's, shall we say,
_strong_ opinions about banking and finance.

I would be surprised, actually, if no dissertations have in fact been written
on this topic. The Pound connection alone makes that unlikely.

~~~
gruseom
Any dissertations presumably would lack this material, because Eliot's letters
are only just being published. That's what's behind the OP and a good many
recent posts about the renascent Eliot.

It's astonishing that Eliot's letters are only being published now (and then
only a small, early fraction of them). The reason appears to be that his
second wife, who was much younger than he, is still alive and exercising tight
control of his legacy.

Pound's mentorship of Eliot is well known, of course. What Pound doesn't
mention in the letter where he praises The Waste Land as the poem of the
century is that he himself had edited it practically to the point of co-
authorship.

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jpdoctor
Without PacBell, Scott Adams would never have given proper birth the Dilbert
or The PHB. He said that he kept that job long after the success of the comic
book just for the source material. He was particularly amused when somebody
from a comic (who was being made fun of) would ask him to autograph their
particular strip.

OK, different league. But same sentiment.

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rtperson
> we know Wallace Stevens sold insurance

No he did not. He was a corporate vice president of two large insurance
companies. The man was no Ned Ryerson.

The writer of this article needs to call the roller of big cigars, the
muscular one.

~~~
gwern
Did he start as a vice president?

~~~
cobralibre
He started as a lawyer to an insurance company. To say that he "sold
insurance" is a bit of poetic license.

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beastman82
This article butchered the very first line:

Even after he published, Prufrock and The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot continued to
work his day job at a bank.

~~~
gruseom
They've since fixed it. There's also this solecism: "nobody wants to think
about the poet [...] pouring over actuarial tables". Though it's true I don't
want to think of my favorite poets destroying perfectly good actuarial tables
by pouring over them.

