SOURCE: "Two Bald Men: Eliot and Dostoevsky," in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, October, 1988, pp. 282-300.

In the essay below, Ayers considers whether Dostoevsky's novel The Double influenced Eliot's writing of "Prufrock."

Students of the influence that one author has had on the work of another have at all times had reason to be careful, not to give too much importance to the superficial resemblance, the odd verbal parallel, while seeking deeper structural affinities—without, that is, making one or two centuries of highbrow literary effort appear to have repeatedly produced the same thing.

In the case of Eliot, possibly the most influence-prone writer of an age, the scholar must be doubly careful. At all points Eliot seems to have anticipated the influence-hunter's search and to have laid false trails—I say "seems" because, once possessed of the notion of Eliot's duplicitousness, it becomes impossible...