The Pooh Perplex

by Frederick Crews

In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Literature, Criticism, Books About Books

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Crews 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

Reviews

[Tom Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hundred fifty pages and yet we barely touch on the Freudian implications of a bear named "Pooh," i.e. feculent excreta? A glaring oversight which this reader hopes to see remedied in forthcoming publications.

5 stars. A howlingly funny spoof, this one tickles all of my fancies.

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not that many years ago, the "case method" was employed on hapless college freshmen in their English classes, to try to give them a handle on the classics. Scholars would publish learned essays about a work of literature as a means to examining it from different angles. The "great classic" under study here? A.A. Milne's WINNIE THE POOH. The year? 1963. The notable scholars? All twelve of them sprang from the fertile imagination of Frederick Crews, all "essays" satirize this-or-that school of criticism at large in the country at that time, and as satire, all are wildly funny.

For example, in a warmed-over essay from 1939, "A Bourgeois Writer's Proletarian Fables," aging lefty "Martin Tempralis" singles out Pooh's bossy buddy Rabbit as the epitome of the capitalist managerial class, leaving Pooh the ultimate member of the Proletariat. Not so, avers the dyed-in-the-wool Freudian of the bunch, "Karl Anschauung," in his "A.A. Milne's Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex," who believes that an understanding of the Pooh books hinges entirely on the fact that all artists, even Milne, are neurotic. Milne in fact is deeply phobic of bears!

In "O Felix Culpa! The Sacramental Meaning of Winnie-the-Pooh" by a certain Dr. Culpepper, obviously a Leavisite, the Pooh and his pals are made to fit a model of Christianity that makes sense to the author if no one else. Playing to the gallery, and occupying he last card in this show, traditionalist Smedley Force insists in his "Prologomena to Any Future Study of Winnie-the-Pooh" that the silly old bear is un-critiqueable: in fact, no literature in English can yet be critiqued at all.

Although the schools of criticism under fire have had their day, Dr. Crews came back many years later with another hilarious send-up of critical preening, POSTMODERN POOH (2001), whose essays this time were delivered during a (phony) MLA conference. In both books, Dr. Crews has a very firm understanding of the foibles of the academic community, which so often seems to be speaking to itself and not the poor undergraduates, or taking pot-shots at rival scholars. I recommend both of these books.

[Graychin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A satiro-comical Tao of Pooh for the lit-theory set. Not everyone’s pot of honey, I suppose, but the bruised initiates of the discipline (former English majors and post-grads, mostly) will appreciate it.

‘A spelling champion and a master of flowery, empty rhetoric, Owl is the necessary handservant to the raw acquisitive passion of Rabbit, which badly needs to be cloaked in grandiosities. The friendship of these two intellectual thugs is a perfect representation of the true role of “scholarship” in bourgeois-industrial society: the end purpose of Owl’s obscure learning is to spread a veil of confusion over the doings of the fat cats, to cow the humble into submission before the graven idols of “objective truth” and “the Western tradition,” and to rob the proletariat of its power to protest.’

Maybe I’m wrong to restrict its appeal. Is it possible not to laugh out loud at this?

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant, but probably better if you've recently finished an English honors seminar on postmodern critical theory (which I had when I first read it). I found it in a thrift shop and fell in love.

It contains several parodies of varying philosophies in literary criticism (e.g., Freudian, Marxist, etc.). It would be fun if it could be updated to include some of the antitheory theorists like the deconstructionists. Each essay is a poisonous little gem that lets you hate the critics even more than you hated them as a student, and laugh at them at the same time.

[Christian Schultheiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

This profound and astounding piece of contextual literature deep diving into the history, meanings and underlying lore of one of the worlds most beloved and “simple” childhood series in a way that from writer essays to writer essay I found myself profoundly questioning what I believed I’d absorbed and adored even in my own life as a lifelong Pooh Stan. Sure this goodwill find was almost entirely just mention to be for college lectures, but that being said it brought the hundred acre wood just that much deeper into my heart and mind and I can definitely see myself letting some friends borrow it occasionally to blow their minds about this book about a silly little bear and his boy.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

#591 in our old book database. Not rated. 11/25/1990.

Thirty-three years on -- to the day, by chance -- I have finished a second reading of The Pooh Perplex, this time sharing it aloud to my 23-year-old daughter, so we could both appreciate the satirical take-down of academia and the biased and flawed individuals who inhabit it.

And just because it is all meant for mockery doesn't mean there aren't some interesting angles and insights into the Pooh books on offer. I'll never think of the Heffalump trap or honey pots as anything other than the vaginal cavities they truly are ever again.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• Preface
• Paradoxical Persona: The Hierarchy of Heroism in Winnie-the-Pooh by Harvey C. Window
• A Bourgeois Writer’s Proletarian Fables by Martin Tempralis
• The Theory and Practice of Bardic Verse: Notations of the Hums of Pooh by P.R. Honeycomb
• Poisoned Paradise: The Underside of Pooh by Myron Masterson
• O Felix Culpa! The Sacramental Meaning of Winnie-the-Pooh by C. J. L. Culpepper, D. Litt., Oxon.
• Winnie and the Cultural Stream by Murphy A. Sweat
• A la recherche du Pooh perdu by Woodbine Meadowlark
• A Complete Analysis of Winnie-the-Pooh by Duns C. Penwiper
• Another Book to Cross Off Your List by Simon Lacerous
• The Style of Pooh: Sources, Analogues, and Influences by Benjamin Thumb
• A.A. Milne’s Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex by Karl Anschauung, M.D.
• Prolegomena to Any Future Study of Winnie-the-Pooh by Smedley Force

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars, rounded down

"Who was James Joyce? Do you agree with the wish he had never been born, or do you subscribe rather to a 'live and let live' philosophy?"

This book is funny. But it isn't layperson funny. It is funny to someone who has spent a lot of time dredging through critical essays, who has read the work of Marx and the works of Marxist critics. It is funny for anyone who knows about the hermeneutics of suspicion, who knows structuralism back and forth, who has spent countless hours wondering when the essayist will get off their jargon-filled soapbox and finally relay the point. And even then, it is only just barely funny.

The later essays in this collection really lean into the theme, poking fun at the field. That's when the satirical voice shines best. Some of the earlier essays really just read like a young person's first attempt at critical theory (i.e. underdeveloped ideas that could use some fine-tuning instead of outright satire). And I've read enough underdeveloped essays for a lifetime, to be honest. Other essays just reminded me of why I hate reading particular fields of critical thought, so thanks for the unwelcome flashbacks! Ultimately, this collection didn't always work for me. I see the vision, though, and I appreciate what it does even if it didn't always hit the nail on the head.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A satire so clever (or a field that sails so close to the silly wind even when not being satirised) that some readers didn't realise that it was satire. It's a wonderful compound spoof of exemplary critical essay handbooks used in post war literature studies in US universities (so they tell me... I wasn't there at the time), containing some essays that actually work as literary criticism and make what seem to me pretty solid points about Winnie the Pooh. "Woodbine Meadowlark's" contribution 'A la recherche du Pooh perdu' actually hits the nail on the head about the poignancy of time and freedom and innocence inexorably slipping by, and the feelings generated in the young (and especially the older) sensitive reader of Pooh as the conclusion of The House at Pooh Corner comes ever closer.

Some of the contributors don't have much to say about Pooh at all (such as the Leavis-like "Simon Lacerous" in his shouty 'Another Book to Cross off Your List', or "Smedley Force" [aka the great textual critic Fredson Bowers], who insists on the indefinite deferral of all literary criticism until every printer's galley, textual variant, sketch, page proof and other paraphenalia have been exhaustively catalogued...), but that is also part of the point. The potted biographies are very amusing, too, especially the one for the Marxist critic. The editorial voice that emerges there and in the questions at the end of each chapter is one familiar to those of us whose studies of literature began in the 'old school', as it were.

It is a more affectionate work than its early 21st century sequel, Postmodern Pooh, but since its targets are less preposterous, that is only to be expected. Overall, this was very enjoyable and very funny indeed. Whether that's because Crews is a genius, Milne was a genius, Pooh is a genius, I am excessively enthusiastic, or all of the above, is hard to say.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the best satires of literary academia that I have ever read. For anyone that has ever had to participate in and explore New Criticism, or purchased any number of curated Harold Bloom collections to make one’s way through the work of the Brontës. This is one of those curated books but curated with inkhorn analyses of Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

I laughed out loud as I read this book. Every style of professor and writer that one can encounter in journals and in the postsecondary classroom are in full and glorious character in Crews’ collection of fake analyses. In an additional fun bent to the copy that I had from the library, and it is truly a shame that this book isn’t likely going to be in print anytime soon, there were clear markings and annotations made in pencil by a student somewhere along the line – a student who may not have read the incredibly dry prose as completely ironic satire – to deliciously include into his or her own serious academic work.

I highly recommend this to any college English major. It is truly a beautiful little diamond that has disappeared, and I owe all of my joy and laughter to Goodreads’ recommendation algorithms for showing me something I would never have found otherwise. In comparison, the closest I have come to finding something like this is Rodney Ascher’s 2012 documentary about Kubrick’s The Shining, which, unfortunately for the academics in the film, I was not supposed to find as incredibly hilarious as I did. In a 2014 Rolling Stone interview cited by Wikipedia, Stephen King said that he ‘never had much patience for academic bullshit,’ and that the film was ‘reaching for things that weren’t there.’ That’s exactly what’s so damn funny about the documentary and Frederick Crews’ book, Steve.

[harrie kd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a paper, it's one of the funniest things I've read in ages. When you're laughing out loud in public, you know you're doing well. Fake critical essays on the philosophy of Pooh, from Freud to Nietzsche, and its role in education, literary theory and so on - very entertaining. The (made up) names & biographies of the various essayists & the study questions for each section are great too. I've had to read other books on Pooh and philosophy that have been far less entertaining.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

All English teachers should assign this fr

[Christoph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get it. Post-modernisms rejection of meaning has hilarious consequences. So lets take the ideal post-modern subject, a freaking children's nursery rhymes collection, and subject it to the same critical analysis subjected to so many haute literature. For the early days of post-structuralism, I am sure this is both cutting-edge and funny. Hip if you will. And the satire is laid bare (pun intended!) in this collection of The Onion-style essays, but at the end of the day I have to ask the question: Why? What exactly is the object of the satire? It is definitely not Pooh, it would seem to imply academia, but even then it would have to be a specific subset of this class. Moreso, it is an attack on the fads of thought and how they cheapen true critical analysis which is not shown here to be serious business.

Each of the twelve essays utilize a different argumentative technique to show the vacuousness of many thinkers out there. From the overly jargon-laid write-up, to the tabloid style, to the phallus, the greatest hits of logic fails are paraded out for the purpose of exposing Winnie the Pooh as the most debaucherous or complex or covert piece of literature since Homer. The pieces are short and not sweet in the slightest. The pompous, snide, ridiculous accusations contained are a perfect counterpoint to the reality of it all.

This definitely didnt blow me away, and left me scratching my head a little bit. Yes this is an outdated vernacular and subject, but sometimes its good to remind yourself how silly the whole game is.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1972 when I found that "Hamlet" was one of 3 Shakespearean tragedies I was to study in my Final Year of English Lit at Sydney Uni, I was delighted to find a filmed version of the play by the Great Russian Director Kozintsev was being given a single showing.
I went.
And everything went downhill from there.
Why??

The film was FANTASTIC!!!...see it!!
A play is meant to be seen in performance, not read.
And then there are the Academic Literary Critics!!!

I was reading a Signet Classic of the play and along with lots of great footnotes and translations of obscure or redundant vocabulary, they had kindly printed several critical essays.
The BIG issue was Hamlet's maddness, or was he???
There was the Freudian analysis and others whose views I have happily suppressed!!
To read them was a nightmare.
To read them was to kill the wonderful film.

I came to treasure Oscar Wilde's summation of Hamlet's critics:
"Are Hamlet's critics mad or are they only pretending to be?"

Crew's book is THE REVENGE in the name of all those who have suffered.
As the Daily Mail commented on Crews' "absolutely withering destruction of the abuses of academic criticism":
'..deadly smash-hits on many paper palaces of literary flatulence.'

And BEST OF ALL, in the tradition of "revenge is sweet"
it is all very VERY FUNNY!!!!

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

The copy that I am reading is a third printing. It is interesting for a number of reasons. The first is that it is old enough to have a library card. I am sorely tempted to take it but I will leave it as a curiosity for those who will read it in the future.

There are a number of passages that are highlighted or underlined as if some student has taken this as a real book of critiques. I wonder how they did on their paper.

This book, I find less interesting than the followup; mainly, because by the time I had made it to university in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a different set of critiques. The good news is that my English profs were more of the what was going on at the time and what do we know about the author types.

The last bit is that there was a strong voice of the author through the whole thing. It was easier to spot that this had been written by one guy. He has gotten better at the spoof in the sequel. All in all, a fun and curious read.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this at a used book store in DC last week and read it in just a couple days. It is a satirical work, parodies of literary criticism. It was a fun look into different ridiculous critiques of Winnie the Pooh. Some I skimmed because they went totally above my head (as I am not an English or Lit major), but others I absolutely loved. For example this passage is from the article A Bourgeois Writer's Fable by Martin Tempralis-

"It is hardly fortuitous that all the chief actors are property owners with no apparent necessity to work; that they are supplied as if by miracle with endless supplies of honey, condensed milk, balloons...

...a series of tales in which every trace of social reality, every detail that might suggest some flaw in the capitalist paradise of pure inherited income, has been ruthlessly suppressed"

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the book is simple: The Pooh Perplex is a case study of various critical approaches to Winnie the Pooh and, in some cases, the House at Pooh Corner.

I must admit, it's brilliantly done, and the pompousness and God-complexes of some of the literary voices he was imitating are beautifully caricatured.

My only complaint is with the sheer unreadability of the book at times. I think that it would have greatly benefited from more footnotes, especially since the "voices" seemed to know that they were far more educated than their audience.

With that being said, almost all of the approaches, including the ones that would have failed a Freshman Comp 101 assignment, added something to my perception of Pooh, and that made it, in the end, worth the tedious work of reading the text.

[Hollis Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly amusing satire of academic bookchat. Everything is here, from the ''full analyis'' to the dodgy translation of an even dodgier Freudian essay. Actually, the scary thing is that this isn't really too far off the mark if you think about it: I bet if I removed the blurb I could put this on the reading list for the course in ''Children's Literature'' at my university and it would be a while before anyone realised that it was a satire. In fact, I once read a serious article in which a teacher applied all the various literary theories in order to interpret the story of the Three Pigs. Be afraid.

Recommended to a few people who were doing modules on Children's Literature on their degree course as light relief, and they all found it amusing.

[Rhonda Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only I had discovered this 1963 book when I was in graduate school, a lot of things would have been clearer. Professor Crews wrote a collection of essays in the style of various literary critics representing popular approaches to literature, the Freudian, the Marxist, the Proustian, and so on. He used the typical freshman composition casebook structure, essay plus questions for discussion, which would permit the student to "become more and more broadminded as time goes by" as long as he doesn't settle on any "truth". Illustrated with sketches from the book dissected, Winnie the Pooh>. A must for any English major or literary critic, this book was followed years later, in 2003, by Crews' equally brilliant Postmodern Pooh>.

[Sarah Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this little "casebook" purporting to be a series of critical essays on Winnie the Pooh, Frederick Crews has a field day with various schools of literary criticism. One supposed "critic" determines that A. A. Milne had a phobia of bears (signifying even deeper sexual obsessions in the subconscious), while a Marxian "critic" finds bourgeoisie prejudices through which the ultimate, "inspiring" triumph of socialist ideals still comes through, and yet another manages to demonstrate that Christopher Robin "is an enemy of everything that is decent, alive, and morally serious."

This is satire at its best--a must-read for all those with an interest in honest appreciation of literature.

[Nara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the book that made me realize I didn't want to be an academic. Full of hilarious "scholarly" studies of Winnie-the-Pooh, from Marxist to Freudian to queer. Each one is damningly plausible, and many read better than a lot of the "serious" scholarship that I've read. Hilarious, and yet a little close to the bone if you spend a lot of time in English departments. Fredrick Crews was mean to my mother once when she was at Berkeley, so buy it used if you have to buy it, but it's such a great read.

[Aleksandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3. 📚 Tiny book, printed in the early 60s, is a collection of essays written in different styles: freudean, socialistic, romantic, religious, over-scientific, etc. Deep humor and brain-teasing I felt through all the pages, but same time reading required a lot of my brain power. I could easily fall asleep if I tried to read it before sleep, and next day I would read the same text but with different "eyes". Probably, I need more reading experience to appreciate such books. Nevertheless, I feel it is a good read for future language critics and writers.

[Matthew Pridham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny and (to anyone drowning in literary criticism in a grad program) disturbingly familiar series of essays supposedly written by a dozen critics of varying schools of jargon.

I mean... schools of thought.

If I ever teach a course on criticism or theory, I’m throwing this little book (and perhaps it’s sequel) at my students first. It provides plenty of evidence for just how wrong critics/theorists can go in their need to render an autopsy on a work of art.

[Danielle Routh · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a big fan of both Winnie-the-Pooh and satire, I absolutely adored this book and frequently found myself laughing out loud at the absurd reaches and conclusions each "scholar" came to. Favorite interpretations were Marxism, sacrament, and "Poisoned Paradise: The Underside of Pooh." Milne's works are the perfect canvas for lighthearted mockery of just how ridiculous some scholarship has become.

[Vanessa Dargain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Attempts to answer in a scholarly way why Winnie the Pooh is inherently revered by modern children and adults . Presents some perculiar literary points of view , but the the question is really never answered . I may read it again .

[Robert Munson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humorous book. I read it back when I had little interest in literary criticism. Despite this the author's creative parodies of different schools of criticism were entertaining. My favorite was the Psychoanalytic interpretation of Winnie the Pooh.

[Duncan Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Brilliant.

[Scull17 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very impressive how Crews found all the things he found in Winnie-the-Pooh (granted he found things that were more than likely not even there in the first place). So funny.

[Michael Weissman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every one of the pieces was spot-on.

[L · Rating 1 out of 5]

If your parody is an exact 1:1 copy of the content it attempts to mock, try again.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a joke (that some have comically turned into an actual philosophical discussion):

* Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.
* Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.
* Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and shouting "I found it!"
* Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight.

And then there is literary criticism/critical theory/literary theory (whichever flavor you choose) so often searching for meaning/symbolism that isn’t there and pretentiously shouting “I found it!”

I suppose the best thing I did in high school was to take AP English… as a non liberal arts major - physics, then computer science, and ultimately mechanical engineering - I never had to suffer through college English. I did take a History of Science class as an undergrad and had the disturbing first day greeting of the professor: “How many of you are engineering majors? I bet you thought this would be an easy elective.”

Pretension crosses every discipline. But it has pernicious roots in literary criticism (even more in postmodern anything, and Crews published a sequel to this 38 years later titled Postmodern Pooh.)

So… what do we have here? First, I recommend having a lot of water on hand when you read it. But then, that is a necessary prophylactic when reading any literary criticism.

Described as “devastatingly funny”, it really isn’t, though the parodistic pretensions of these pseudo-analyses can be comical. Still, the funniest parts are the Questions and Study Projects after each essay. Think along the lines of the old absurd multidisciplinary (yes, a parody) Ultimate Final Exam questions of the like:

PHILOSOPHY:
Sketch the development of human thought; estimate its significance.  Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE:
Describe in detail.  Be objective and specific.
EXTRA CREDIT:
Define the Universe; give three examples.