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Rethinking Theory
Postmodern Pooh
Purporting to be the proceedings of a forum on Pooh convened at the Modern Language Association's annual convention, this sequel of sorts to the classic send-up of literary criticism, The Pooh Perplex , brilliantly parodies the academic fads and figures that held sway at the millennium. Deconstruction, poststructuralist Marxism, new historicism, radical feminism, cultural studies, recovered-memory theory, and postcolonialism, among other methods, take their shots at the poor stuffed bear and Frederick Crews takes his well-considered, wildly funny shots at them. His aim, as ever, is true.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 10, 2001
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About the author
Frederick Crews
28 books27 followersCrews was born in suburban Philadelphia in 1933. In high school, Crews was co-captain of the tennis team; and he continues to be an avid skier, hiker, swimmer, motorcyclist, and runner. Crews lives in Berkeley with his wife of 52 years, Elizabeth Crews, a photographer who was born and raised in Berkeley, CA. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.
Crews completed his undergraduate education at Yale University in 1955. Though his degree was in English, Crews entered the Directed Studies program during his first two years at Yale, which Crews described as his greatest experience because the program was taught by a coordinated faculty and required students to distribute their courses among sciences, social sciences, literature, and philosophy. He received his Ph.D in Literature from Princeton University in 1958.
Crews joined the UC Berkeley English Department in 1958 where he taught for 36 years before retiring as its chair in 1994. Crews was an anti-war activist from 1965 to about 1970 and advocated draft resistance as co-chair of Berkeley’s Faculty Peace Committee. Though he shared the widespread assumption during the mid-1960s that psychoanalytic theory was a valid account of human motivation and was one of the first academics to apply that theory systematically to the study of literature, Crews gradually came to regard psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience. Crews’ change of heart about psychoanalysis convinced him that his loyalty shouldn’t belong to any theory but rather to empirical standards and the skeptical point of view. Throughout his career, Crews has brought his concern for rational discourse to the study of various issues, from the recovered memory craze, Rorschach tests, and belief in alien abductions, to theosophy, creationism, and “intelligent design,” to common standards of clear and effective writing.
Fulbright Lectureship, Turin, Italy, 1961–62
Essay Prize, National Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1968
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, 1965–66
Guggenheim Fellowship (Literary criticism), 1970[1]
Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California, Berkeley, 1985
Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991
Faculty Research Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, 1991–92
Editorial Board, “Rethinking Theory” series, Northwestern University Press, 1992–present
Nomination for National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction (The Critics Bear It Away), 1992
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay (The Critics Bear It Away), 1993
Berkeley Citation, 1994
Inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002, ed. Natalie Angier (Houghton Mifflin), 2002
Fellow, Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health, 2003–present
Berkeley Fellow, 2005–present
Inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005, ed. Jonathan Weiner (Houghton Mifflin), 2005
Nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award (Follies of the Wise), 2006
Crews completed his undergraduate education at Yale University in 1955. Though his degree was in English, Crews entered the Directed Studies program during his first two years at Yale, which Crews described as his greatest experience because the program was taught by a coordinated faculty and required students to distribute their courses among sciences, social sciences, literature, and philosophy. He received his Ph.D in Literature from Princeton University in 1958.
Crews joined the UC Berkeley English Department in 1958 where he taught for 36 years before retiring as its chair in 1994. Crews was an anti-war activist from 1965 to about 1970 and advocated draft resistance as co-chair of Berkeley’s Faculty Peace Committee. Though he shared the widespread assumption during the mid-1960s that psychoanalytic theory was a valid account of human motivation and was one of the first academics to apply that theory systematically to the study of literature, Crews gradually came to regard psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience. Crews’ change of heart about psychoanalysis convinced him that his loyalty shouldn’t belong to any theory but rather to empirical standards and the skeptical point of view. Throughout his career, Crews has brought his concern for rational discourse to the study of various issues, from the recovered memory craze, Rorschach tests, and belief in alien abductions, to theosophy, creationism, and “intelligent design,” to common standards of clear and effective writing.
Fulbright Lectureship, Turin, Italy, 1961–62
Essay Prize, National Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1968
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, 1965–66
Guggenheim Fellowship (Literary criticism), 1970[1]
Distinguished Teaching Award, University of California, Berkeley, 1985
Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991
Faculty Research Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, 1991–92
Editorial Board, “Rethinking Theory” series, Northwestern University Press, 1992–present
Nomination for National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction (The Critics Bear It Away), 1992
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay (The Critics Bear It Away), 1993
Berkeley Citation, 1994
Inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002, ed. Natalie Angier (Houghton Mifflin), 2002
Fellow, Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health, 2003–present
Berkeley Fellow, 2005–present
Inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005, ed. Jonathan Weiner (Houghton Mifflin), 2005
Nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award (Follies of the Wise), 2006
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
December 22, 2023
It's always exhilarating to watch Literary Theory in action, but did we really need to tarnish Milne's good name by dredging up the Freudian implications of a bear named "Pooh," i.e. feculent excreta? A tasteless oversight which this reader hopes to see remedied in forthcoming publications.
5 stars. I love this game.
5 stars. I love this game.
March 28, 2019
In 1963, when grandiose critical theories like Marxism, Freudianism, and "New Criticism" ruled the English departments of the land, academic Frederick C. Crews published a little chapbook called THE POOH PERPLEX. Mind you, it was not a satire in fiction form on academic life like LUCKY JIM or MOO, but a kind of parody
Festschrift
in casebook form, dedicated to the memory and hyper-aggrandizement of the original Silly Old Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and told in satirical takes by representative fictional "scholars" of the day.
Not one to rush the success of the original book, Crews waited thirty-eight years, 'til 2001, before critical fads and fashions had changed enough to permit this second send-up. POSTMODERN POOH is another triumph: this time, "addresses" given at a hypothetical MLA* meeting, this time mired in early 21st-Century academia whose pet theories -- and all the tedious bargle of "conceptual vocabulary" -- included Radical Feminism, New Historicism, Deconstruction, Recovered Memory Theory and the like.
* That's "Modern Language Association," though most of you probably know it.
Just as before, the contemporary academics wrap themselves in dogma and strut their stuff, as blithely oblivious to the real world as the generation of scholars before it. Chapter Four, for example, is entitled "Just Lack a Woman," written by one "Sisela Catheter," who quickly avers that her "Gynocritical Discourse" isn't just any literary theory; "[I]t partakes of a much wider project: the rescue of Earth itself from the gender that has brought it to the brink of catastrophe." Not to be outdone, yesterday's academic Wunderkind Victor Fassell historically, if incomprehensibly, relates the publication of the first Pooh book in 1925 to a meeting of Seventh-Day Adventists, the later abdication of Edward VIII from the throne of England and the fact that Winston Churchill was, like Pooh, a kind of bear himself.
As with any satire, it is imperative to know what is being satirized, but POSTMODERN POOH should appeal to anyone who has wondered over the profusion of literary theories that become discredited, only to be replaced by revamped versions of themselves. Or, for that matter, the tendency on the part of some "postmodern" scholars to work gender, political and environmental concerns into texts that bear no trace of those things. In such cases this book will provoke smiles here, if not a succession of belly-laughs. Surely even Pooh himself would have enjoyed a chuckle or two in cases he did not understand at all!
Not one to rush the success of the original book, Crews waited thirty-eight years, 'til 2001, before critical fads and fashions had changed enough to permit this second send-up. POSTMODERN POOH is another triumph: this time, "addresses" given at a hypothetical MLA* meeting, this time mired in early 21st-Century academia whose pet theories -- and all the tedious bargle of "conceptual vocabulary" -- included Radical Feminism, New Historicism, Deconstruction, Recovered Memory Theory and the like.
* That's "Modern Language Association," though most of you probably know it.
Just as before, the contemporary academics wrap themselves in dogma and strut their stuff, as blithely oblivious to the real world as the generation of scholars before it. Chapter Four, for example, is entitled "Just Lack a Woman," written by one "Sisela Catheter," who quickly avers that her "Gynocritical Discourse" isn't just any literary theory; "[I]t partakes of a much wider project: the rescue of Earth itself from the gender that has brought it to the brink of catastrophe." Not to be outdone, yesterday's academic Wunderkind Victor Fassell historically, if incomprehensibly, relates the publication of the first Pooh book in 1925 to a meeting of Seventh-Day Adventists, the later abdication of Edward VIII from the throne of England and the fact that Winston Churchill was, like Pooh, a kind of bear himself.
As with any satire, it is imperative to know what is being satirized, but POSTMODERN POOH should appeal to anyone who has wondered over the profusion of literary theories that become discredited, only to be replaced by revamped versions of themselves. Or, for that matter, the tendency on the part of some "postmodern" scholars to work gender, political and environmental concerns into texts that bear no trace of those things. In such cases this book will provoke smiles here, if not a succession of belly-laughs. Surely even Pooh himself would have enjoyed a chuckle or two in cases he did not understand at all!
September 17, 2018
Brilliant, often funny, and occasionally hilarious, fictional non-fiction satirizing many of the academic trends in analysis of literature. When people review books, the reviews often say as much, or more, about themselves. That's fine if you are don't act like your interpretation of a text is the only possible one. But that, of course, is what some academics do. Making provocative statements is one way to get noticed and promote yourself.
It is unsurprising that Crews knows all about the different styles and trends of textual analysis and personalities of academics. What is surprising is that this guy, who has published very little fiction, can write such good satires. The fictional authors of the pieces here, supposedly articles presented in an academic conference, come alive as real characters, all seeing totally different things in the text and talking past, rather than with, each other. Das Nuff Dat sees a story of colonialism, Dolores Malatesta, who in her "real" life sent her father to prison for sexual abuse that he is still "struggling to remember" having committed, sees evidence of ritual satanic abuse, and so on with the other "authors".
It probably helps if you know a little about "theory", and academia. Maybe it helps to have read any of the Pooh books. (Disclaimer, I have not.) But if you have ever met any pompous ass in any context, and of course you have, then you can enjoy seeing these ones get roasted.
While Crews is a big critic of Freud you won't see much mention of penis envy or Oedipus complex here. That was skewered already in "The Pooh Perplex". But 35 years or so later there was plenty of new material to mock in the field of Pooh Studies.
Trigger warning: Contains Poo(h) jokes. The most laugh-out-loud funny chapter for me was from the author obsessed with Pooh's innards. Could rabbit have gotten Pooh unstuck through judicious use of an enema? Or does Pooh even poo?
It is unsurprising that Crews knows all about the different styles and trends of textual analysis and personalities of academics. What is surprising is that this guy, who has published very little fiction, can write such good satires. The fictional authors of the pieces here, supposedly articles presented in an academic conference, come alive as real characters, all seeing totally different things in the text and talking past, rather than with, each other. Das Nuff Dat sees a story of colonialism, Dolores Malatesta, who in her "real" life sent her father to prison for sexual abuse that he is still "struggling to remember" having committed, sees evidence of ritual satanic abuse, and so on with the other "authors".
It probably helps if you know a little about "theory", and academia. Maybe it helps to have read any of the Pooh books. (Disclaimer, I have not.) But if you have ever met any pompous ass in any context, and of course you have, then you can enjoy seeing these ones get roasted.
While Crews is a big critic of Freud you won't see much mention of penis envy or Oedipus complex here. That was skewered already in "The Pooh Perplex". But 35 years or so later there was plenty of new material to mock in the field of Pooh Studies.
Trigger warning: Contains Poo(h) jokes. The most laugh-out-loud funny chapter for me was from the author obsessed with Pooh's innards. Could rabbit have gotten Pooh unstuck through judicious use of an enema? Or does Pooh even poo?
January 30, 2008
Full disclosure: As far as Winnie the Pooh is concerned, I'm in Dorothy Parker's camp. I think it's nauseatingly cutesy dreck that condescends to children. But that's neither here nor there, because the target in "Postmodern Pooh" is not Pooh. In this sequel to his earlier book, "The Pooh Perplex", Crews instead takes aim at various current fads in academic literary criticism, using Pooh as a vehicle. This is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but the results are hilarious.
The book purports to be the proceedings of a forum on Winnie-the-Pooh at the Modern Language Association's annual convention. Crews takes devastating aim at the whole bunch, including, but not limited to:
Deconstructionism
Poststructuralist Marxism
Radical Feminism (gynocritical theory)
New Historicism
Postcolonialism
Sociobiological Analysis
QueerCultStudLitCrit
the Woolf wrote Milne school
"As for 'the reader', spare me! The term elides difference, attempts to inscribe on a bubbling bouillabaisse of potentialities one model of a stolid, passive, tabula rasa receptor. Grant yourself a 'reader' and you automatically become a writer -- worse, a communicator with a plain message that 'the reader' will supposedly open like some ersatz telegram announcing that he has been declared a finalist in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes."
"As you've seen, the Colonized Unconscious has already had its way with both Pooh and Milne, turning their backbones to Yorkshire pudding."
The book will probably be funniest (or most tragic) to academics who actually have to navigate the sordid back alleys of lit crit to ensure their professional survival. But there is plenty to amuse the general reader as well.
The book purports to be the proceedings of a forum on Winnie-the-Pooh at the Modern Language Association's annual convention. Crews takes devastating aim at the whole bunch, including, but not limited to:
Deconstructionism
Poststructuralist Marxism
Radical Feminism (gynocritical theory)
New Historicism
Postcolonialism
Sociobiological Analysis
QueerCultStudLitCrit
the Woolf wrote Milne school
"As for 'the reader', spare me! The term elides difference, attempts to inscribe on a bubbling bouillabaisse of potentialities one model of a stolid, passive, tabula rasa receptor. Grant yourself a 'reader' and you automatically become a writer -- worse, a communicator with a plain message that 'the reader' will supposedly open like some ersatz telegram announcing that he has been declared a finalist in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes."
"As you've seen, the Colonized Unconscious has already had its way with both Pooh and Milne, turning their backbones to Yorkshire pudding."
The book will probably be funniest (or most tragic) to academics who actually have to navigate the sordid back alleys of lit crit to ensure their professional survival. But there is plenty to amuse the general reader as well.
July 21, 2018
2.5 stars
Maybe I just hold Winnie the Pooh too dearly, but I couldn't completely enjoy the things that were written in this book. I do see the satire of it, and the mocking of various literary theories and how the theorists take themselves too seriously (and sometimes try too hard to find "evidence" to back up their theories... one thing I hated about analytical English classes), but it just hurt my heart to read some of the things that were written about Winnie the Pooh and the Winnie the Pooh books.
Maybe I just hold Winnie the Pooh too dearly, but I couldn't completely enjoy the things that were written in this book. I do see the satire of it, and the mocking of various literary theories and how the theorists take themselves too seriously (and sometimes try too hard to find "evidence" to back up their theories... one thing I hated about analytical English classes), but it just hurt my heart to read some of the things that were written about Winnie the Pooh and the Winnie the Pooh books.
Want to read
January 30, 2023A sequel of sorts.
July 26, 2012
A brilliant sequel to Crews' The Pooh Perplex, this book is a compilation of Crews' essays spoofing the postmodern, deconstructionist literary criticism that has shanghaied, hogtied, and stuffed shop rags into the mouth of the MLA. If I'd read the Perplex in grad school, I would have understood all my classes better. If I'd read Postmodern before starting an (unfinished) PhD program, I wouldn't have been so confused after being away from academia for eight years and might not have bothered. Not all professors had been infected with postmodernism, but when I asked one of them to explain something to me, he leered, "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Mwahahahaha. Crews explains it.
By the way, Crews was not able to use the sketches from Winnie the Pooh for this book as he had for The Pooh Perplex. Someone had discovered licensing of children's icons and wouldn't allow free fair-use again, though The Pooh Perplex had been a big success.
By the way, Crews was not able to use the sketches from Winnie the Pooh for this book as he had for The Pooh Perplex. Someone had discovered licensing of children's icons and wouldn't allow free fair-use again, though The Pooh Perplex had been a big success.
March 22, 2012
I gave this three stars because I couldn't give it five. I wanted to give it five because it's HILARIOUS!
It's basically a satirical recounting of a fictional postmodern literary critique conference on the subject of Winnie the Pooh. Each "scholar" takes Pooh for his/her own personal spin in order to denounce the decline of the gentleman, or expose Piglet's hidden abuse, or lament the cause of woman. The book takes all the theories of the postmodern literary field and airs them for the world to see them for they really are: Absurdities.
However, I can't give it five stars because I don't want any of my conservative friends to unwittingly pick it up and be shocked at me. If you haven't caught on by cultural osmosis, a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of postmodern literary theory is obsessed with sex. Frederick Crews in his satire makes frequent use of this, and there are things in the book that are a pretty sketchy. So, it's funny, but consider yourself warned.
It's basically a satirical recounting of a fictional postmodern literary critique conference on the subject of Winnie the Pooh. Each "scholar" takes Pooh for his/her own personal spin in order to denounce the decline of the gentleman, or expose Piglet's hidden abuse, or lament the cause of woman. The book takes all the theories of the postmodern literary field and airs them for the world to see them for they really are: Absurdities.
However, I can't give it five stars because I don't want any of my conservative friends to unwittingly pick it up and be shocked at me. If you haven't caught on by cultural osmosis, a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of postmodern literary theory is obsessed with sex. Frederick Crews in his satire makes frequent use of this, and there are things in the book that are a pretty sketchy. So, it's funny, but consider yourself warned.
July 3, 2008
This book is the perfect summary of why I didn't go into graduate school for literature. If you think that the parody essays exemplifying different theoretical approaches in this book are over the top and unrealistic, just go look at the listing of presentation and paper titles for the Modern Language Association--those are even scarier. I keep this one around as a good reminder that us academic types should refrain from taking ourselves too seriously. It's a dangerous temptation to start thinking in terms of buzzwards from postructuralism to neomarxism: down that path madness lies.
October 31, 2017
Once again, a hilarious take on literary criticism. Writing-wise, Postmodern Pooh was stronger and funnier than The Pooh Perplex 37 years earlier. The ridiculousness of the extremes of [American] public intellectuals and faddish theory are laid out well in Postmodern Pooh--and not without its poignant moments. As a play-text for teaching theory, The Pooh Perplex is stronger, working better as both model and critique.
April 27, 2015
very clever and very annoying - synced up really well with my writing a ton of meaningless papers at the moment
November 23, 2019
For some reason I thought that retired professors of literature couldn't be laugh-out-loud funny. How wrong I was.
Crews sends up literary critical fashions and persons (Stephen Greenblatt and Harold Bloom are very thinly, or, in the latter case, very fatly, diguised) as he assembles the papers from an academic conference on Pooh. Deconstruction, New Historicism, Marxism, Feminism, Post-Colonialism, Biopoetics, Queer Theory and a few I'm not sure how to label. He throws in a recovered memory agitator (one of his pet peeves in proper real life, as opposed to lit crit real life) and an old school liberal critic, too. He does a fairly good job of imitating the voices of eleven different scholars, but a very good job of inhabiting their critical styles, procedures, ticks, jargon, flourishes, etc. He even sends up himself in the Preface (coming across as much more doddery and less pugnacious than he does in his straight essays, a few of which I have recently glanced at), though with a certain faux naivete, archness and hint of resentment that does raise the question of how fictional that particular Frederick Crews is.
Beyond the silliness of the names, wordplays, stereotypes and general mockery from Crews is some more "serious" stuff -- interpretations and readings of Pooh (often hilarious in their ingenuity), and actual quotations from publications in the fields of literary and cultural studies adduced in support of (or consonant with, or by the by, or as gospel, as is the fashion in such writing) what said scholar is saying about Pooh. Truth is often stranger than fiction. And though satire and lampoonery often requires it, Crews has barely exaggerated the bizarreness and hubris of the writings of these critical and Theory-driven schools, as the quotations and footnotes attest. He really does make these readings work, too, so I found myself occasionally nodding along as well as chuckling. Literary critical fashions don't only produce nonsense, after all... do they?
Crews sends up literary critical fashions and persons (Stephen Greenblatt and Harold Bloom are very thinly, or, in the latter case, very fatly, diguised) as he assembles the papers from an academic conference on Pooh. Deconstruction, New Historicism, Marxism, Feminism, Post-Colonialism, Biopoetics, Queer Theory and a few I'm not sure how to label. He throws in a recovered memory agitator (one of his pet peeves in proper real life, as opposed to lit crit real life) and an old school liberal critic, too. He does a fairly good job of imitating the voices of eleven different scholars, but a very good job of inhabiting their critical styles, procedures, ticks, jargon, flourishes, etc. He even sends up himself in the Preface (coming across as much more doddery and less pugnacious than he does in his straight essays, a few of which I have recently glanced at), though with a certain faux naivete, archness and hint of resentment that does raise the question of how fictional that particular Frederick Crews is.
Beyond the silliness of the names, wordplays, stereotypes and general mockery from Crews is some more "serious" stuff -- interpretations and readings of Pooh (often hilarious in their ingenuity), and actual quotations from publications in the fields of literary and cultural studies adduced in support of (or consonant with, or by the by, or as gospel, as is the fashion in such writing) what said scholar is saying about Pooh. Truth is often stranger than fiction. And though satire and lampoonery often requires it, Crews has barely exaggerated the bizarreness and hubris of the writings of these critical and Theory-driven schools, as the quotations and footnotes attest. He really does make these readings work, too, so I found myself occasionally nodding along as well as chuckling. Literary critical fashions don't only produce nonsense, after all... do they?
March 30, 2020
So, I pulled this off my shelf. I wondered, why the fuck did I buy this. I find postmodernism to be a bit of crapshoot. Just an excuse to say that all points are valid and rarely does it provide any ability to criticize.
In the early 90s, in university, I hated this crap and wrote papers against it. Sure, modernism and one true idea was not without its problems. But the opposite explosion and proliferation of looking at things was in some ways the same type of issues.
I started reading this with great skepticism. After I read the first chapter, I asked if this was some type of joke? That first chapter was definitely skewering some papers I had read. I looked at the back of the book and then the penny dropped. This was a book of parodies of the movements.
Now, I could sit back and relax. This was a lot of fun and took me right back to my university days. Strangely, a lot of the mainstream discussions about gender, sexism, scientism all have their roots in some of these academic movements. It was refreshing to see how loosely lampooning these bits showed the problems with some of their approaches.; at the same time, making fun of the whack a mole cynicism that I hold as well.
Super fun. I put the previous book on hold at the library right away. It was that funny and on point.
In the early 90s, in university, I hated this crap and wrote papers against it. Sure, modernism and one true idea was not without its problems. But the opposite explosion and proliferation of looking at things was in some ways the same type of issues.
I started reading this with great skepticism. After I read the first chapter, I asked if this was some type of joke? That first chapter was definitely skewering some papers I had read. I looked at the back of the book and then the penny dropped. This was a book of parodies of the movements.
Now, I could sit back and relax. This was a lot of fun and took me right back to my university days. Strangely, a lot of the mainstream discussions about gender, sexism, scientism all have their roots in some of these academic movements. It was refreshing to see how loosely lampooning these bits showed the problems with some of their approaches.; at the same time, making fun of the whack a mole cynicism that I hold as well.
Super fun. I put the previous book on hold at the library right away. It was that funny and on point.
August 29, 2017
A second collection of perceptible incompatible , disparate essays addressing aspects of literary criticism from the 1980' to the present ; from a deconstructivist or culturally multidimensional viewpoint rather than a strictly new criticism or structuralist one .
Very bombastic rhetoric ! And not humorous at all . Only die hard word sleuths and semanticists should attempt reading it .
Very bombastic rhetoric ! And not humorous at all . Only die hard word sleuths and semanticists should attempt reading it .
August 2, 2018
pretty funny, some of it went over my head
July 26, 2019
When it lands, it lands
March 25, 2020
I have no idea. I like the spirit. Criticism!
March 6, 2021
I didn’t read the first book (The Pooh Perplex), but found this one to be very thought provoking.
April 15, 2025
Definitely had to be in the mood for this, but it's a great send-up of academia and the hilarious way theories get expressed. And it's about Winnie the Pooh - what's not to like?
November 5, 2012
A fictional symposium on A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh allows Frederick Crews to offer a variety of hilariously-rendered (but scrupulously plausible and carefully footnoted) readings or appropriations of this classic children's work – including post-colonial, post-structuralist, new historicist, Marxist, feminist and even a Darwinian literary study entitled "Gene/Meme Covariation in Ashdown Forest: Pooh and the Consilience of Knowledge".
This is a brilliant parody of everything you've ever studied in post-graduate literary criticism, wonderfully skewering the tortured language of academia. Crews' fabulous take-off of Stanley Fish (well, I assume it is him), "You Don't Know what Pooh Studies Are About, Do You, and Even If You Did, Do You Think Anybody Would Be Impressed?" by N. Mack Hobbs had me laughing until I cried:
This is a brilliant parody of everything you've ever studied in post-graduate literary criticism, wonderfully skewering the tortured language of academia. Crews' fabulous take-off of Stanley Fish (well, I assume it is him), "You Don't Know what Pooh Studies Are About, Do You, and Even If You Did, Do You Think Anybody Would Be Impressed?" by N. Mack Hobbs had me laughing until I cried:
Although his fundamental and daring innovations of theory always meet with initial resistance from traditionalists, sooner or later the profession tags along like a puppy on a choke chain."
August 29, 2007
This was a worthwhile read, and definitely biting satire, but it fell short of its predecessor in humor; perhaps because it's too realistic. Academia, the target its' jokes are directed at, has grown far more outrageous since Crewe first penned "The Pooh Perplex" to instant success. Many of the essays in Postmodern Pooh are all too believable. The one that really shines out is the essay "The Fissured Subtext" by Crewe's vitriolic post-structuralist Marxist, Carla Gulag, the Joe Camel Professor of Child Development at Duke University. This not only has one of the funniest passages from the book, but it is easier to understand. Partly, I'm sure, because my limited study of philosophy has not covered Jacques Derrida with the same zeal as Karl Marx (or any zeal at all; I had not heard of this humorous abomination before picking up Postmodern Pooh.}
June 23, 2014
This book serves a double function: it's a biting satire of the major strands of contemporary postmodern literary criticism (Derridian, historicist, Marxist, feminist, queer, postcolonial, etc.), but it also serves as a good crash-course introduction to the basic impulses of those different factions. The book loses a little of its comedic steam in the final third, and I have to admit that it was a little too crude for my taste, but it is worth reading. As a Christian, I found myself noticing that the concept of love was completely absent from the entire book, which leads me to think that Alan Jacob's "A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love" may be the best way forward after reading this book.
But mostly, it's hilarious.
But mostly, it's hilarious.
October 2, 2010
Brilliantly done, but not as novel as its original, Pooh Perplex.
It would make a good secondary course book (along with its companion book) but is definitely not stand-alone in a course of Lit Crit, which is how I was introduced to it.
My ambivalence lies here: Yes, it's a brilliant mockery of literary theorists, but pedantic, egoist, idiotic text is still pedantic, egoist, and idiotic even if it's intended to be that way.
I detested it, and yet I value what it accomplished.
It would make a good secondary course book (along with its companion book) but is definitely not stand-alone in a course of Lit Crit, which is how I was introduced to it.
My ambivalence lies here: Yes, it's a brilliant mockery of literary theorists, but pedantic, egoist, idiotic text is still pedantic, egoist, and idiotic even if it's intended to be that way.
I detested it, and yet I value what it accomplished.
May 27, 2009
A biting send up of postmodern literary criticism. Crews takes on deconstruction, biogenetics, radical feminism, queer cultural studies, and neo-Marxism to name a few. The absolute best chapters are the first and last where Crews brilliantly captures the inanity of Derrida and Stanley Fish respectively. A must read for anyone who finds themselves slightly suspicious of the postmodern pooh on offer, especially by certain proponents of the emerging church.
January 11, 2015
Some people say that we can never travel far in life if we forget to take our favourite stuffed Bear with us. Crews has not only constructed and deconstructed the world of Pooh he has left it impossible for us to read such a simple story straight again. A book which is perfect for the boarded parent recreating a fresh view for their 3rd child. Definitely one for excelsentionist leanings not to mention a truly great laugh as well.
November 5, 2015
This was funny. I knew it was a satire of literary criticism, and it didn't disappoint in the satire department. I think you'd need at least a modicum of experience with the literary criticism styles that are around at the moment, such as queer studies, feminist lit crit, marxist, victim theory, Derridean theory, and the like. I pretty much lost it when the first essay discussed Derridadaism in Pooh...
September 8, 2011
This book was mildly amusing. I think I would have liked it better if it was just a series of critical essays and not a discussion among critics. I enjoy reading critical essays, even though I'm not an English scholar by profession. Reading these essays, however, made me glad that I chose science and don't have to debate literature with people like those profiled in this book.
February 26, 2012
‘The rememoration of the “present” as space is the possibility of the utopian imperative of no-(particular)-place, the metropolitan project that can supplement the post-colonial attempt at the impossible cathexis of place-bound history as the lost time of the spectator.’ That’s what we’re all here for, wouldn’t you agree?
July 1, 2007
This was such a funny book. The inside joke was that if you got the joke, the joke was on you. Satire is not the easiest thing to read and enjoy, and I so enjoyed this one. Seriously, I believe pooh was written by Virgina Wolf...
July 27, 2007
This is a brilliant piss-take, so to speak. It really pokes fun at literary theory, at the different critics and critical schools, and at the dangers of believing too thoroughly in any school of theory. A must-read for all English majors and students of literary criticism.
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