Anyone who enjoys literary criticism but has their doubts about some of it will find The Pooh Perplex hilariously funny. It is a collection of parodies of different schools of criticism, cast in the form of a student casebook on Winnie the Pooh. The volume as a whole, with bibliographic notes at the beginning and study questions at the end of each essay, is a parody of student study guides in general. Frederick Crews knows his stuff, and is equally at home lampooning Freudian, Marxist, or Leavisite theory (to mention just a few). I don't understand why it took so long for me to discover Crew's delicious volume; just go out and buy a copy now; you won't regret it!

The essays:

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

Of course The Pooh Perplex is now out of date — someone needs to produce a second edition that covers structuralist, post-structuralist and deconstructionist approaches. [Note: In 2001 Frederick Crews did just that with Postmodern Pooh.]

October 1993

External links:

- buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Related reviews:

- Frederick Crews - Postmodern Pooh
- more humour
- more literary criticism