 First hardcover edition | |
| Author | Frederick Crews |
|---|---|
| Publisher | E. P. Dutton (US) |
Publication date | 1963 |
| Followed by | Postmodern Pooh |
The Pooh Perplex is a 1963 book by Frederick Crews that includes essays on Winnie-the-Pooh as a satire of literary criticism. Crews published a sequel in 2001, Postmodern Pooh. [1]
Frederick Crews was an American essayist and literary critic. When he published The Pooh Perplex, he was teaching English at the University of California, Berkeley. [2] In the 1960s, he sought to write a work that criticized common styles of literary criticism at the time, namely critics allowing their own biases to shape their interpretations of a work, as well as casebooks. According to a 2002 interview Crews gave to NPR, he chose Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) to be the subject of his book because it was widely read and "very transparent[...] so that it [could] be exploited by all these critics." Crews wrote twelve essays on the book under various pseudonyms that 'analyzed' the book through various lenses such as Marxism. [3] [4]
The book was first published by E. P. Dutton in 1963. [4]
The book includes twelve essays by fictional critics (all Crews writing under pseudonyms), from the points of view of critics such as a Marxist, Freudian, and New Critic. [5]
Crews, in his 2002 interview with NPR, said that the book was well received, even by the community of literary critics it was satirizing. [3] A 1964 review published in College Composition and Communication felt that the book would be difficult to read in one sitting, but was "a tonic for those of us who read literary criticism and may be therapeutic for those who write it." [4] The CEA Critic published a satirical review by Richard L. Greene, who demanded that the book not be stocked in college bookstores lest it encourage people to start making fun of myths or archetypes. [6] Robert M. Adams in The Virginia Quarterly Review felt that the book tried to do too much with twelve essays "about nothing at all" and that, while Crews made some valid points, he had been too indiscriminate in "clubbing" literary criticism "to death". [7]
In The New York Times , Orville Prescott deemed Crews' work "the most brilliant volume of parodies since the publication of Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland ." Prescott positively received all of the essays, writing that he considered them necessary reading for those involved in literary criticism, although they might not appeal to the general public, and noted that R. P. Blackmur, Leslie Fiedler and F. R. Leavis were clearly targeted by them. He concluded that it was "not only a triumph of ridiculous parody. It is also a fine demonstration that a critic with no humor and little common sense can make any given work of literature mean absolutely anything." [2]
The academic Alison Lurie wrote in 1991 that The Pooh Perplex made writing about Winnie-the-Pooh "awkward (if not impossible)" because he had "said most of what could be said about Pooh" in his satirical works, making it hard for critics to conduct serious analysis. She notes that his work "stifle[d] almost all critical comment on Winnie-the-Pooh for almost a decade." [8] Four years later, Paula T. Connolly also noted the work's side-effect of stifling critical analysis of Pooh as critics feared sounding like those Crews was satirizing. It has since led many critics to simply dismiss Milne's children's work as lacking depth. Connolly wrote in 1995, however, that the "freeze [...] seems to be thawing". [9]
Alan Alexander Milne was an English writer best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as for children's poetry. Milne was primarily a playwright before the huge success of Winnie-the-Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. He served in both world wars, as a lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the First World War and as a captain in the Home Guard in the Second World War.
Kanga is a character in A. A. Milne's books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). A female kangaroo and the mother of Roo, she is the only female character in Milne's Pooh books. Kanga and Roo are the only pair of animals of the same species in the books, and their close relationship is emphasized by the combination of their names ("Kanga-Roo"). The maternal instinct, in addition to Kanga's desire to always keep Roo close to her, in her pouch, is also evident in Kanga's willingness to adopt the newly arrived Tigger.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a French literary critic.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a 1926 children's book by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The book is set in the fictional Hundred Acre Wood, with a collection of short stories following the adventures of an anthropomorphic teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, and Roo. It is the first of two story collections by Milne about Winnie-the-Pooh, the second being The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne and Shepard collaborated previously for English humour magazine Punch, and in 1924 created When We Were Very Young, a poetry collection. Among the characters in the poetry book was a teddy bear Shepard modelled after his son's toy. Following this, Shepard encouraged Milne to write about his son Christopher Robin Milne's toys, and so they became the inspiration for the characters in Winnie-the-Pooh.
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York.
Alison Stewart Lurie was an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.
Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend is a 1996 book by Richard Wallace in which Wallace proposed a theory that British author Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles L. Dodgson (1832–1898), and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne (1829–1908) were responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders.
Richard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet.
"Epic Pooh" is a 1978 essay by the British science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, which reviews the field of epic fantasy, with a particular focus on epic fantasy written for children. In it Moorcock critiques J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings for its politically conservative assumptions and its escapism. Originally written for the British Science Fiction Association, "Epic Pooh" was revised for inclusion in Moorcock's 1989 book Wizardry and Wild Romance. Critics and scholars have objected to multiple aspects of Moorcock's essay.
Ada Esther Leverson was a British writer who is known for her friendship with Oscar Wilde and for her work as a witty novelist of the fin-de-siècle.
Richard Gustave Stern was an American novelist, short story writer, and educator.
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn. The journal was unsuccessful and Blackwood fired Pringle and Cleghorn and relaunched the journal as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine under his own editorship. The journal eventually adopted the shorter name and from the relaunch often referred to itself as Maga. The title page bore the image of George Buchanan, a 16th-century Scottish historian, religious and political thinker.
Frederick Campbell Crews was an American essayist and literary critic. Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews was the author of numerous books, including The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later Novels of Henry James (1957), E. M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism (1962), and The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes (1966), a discussion of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He received popular attention for The Pooh Perplex (1963), a book of satirical essays parodying various schools of literary criticism. Initially a proponent of psychoanalytic literary criticism, Crews later rejected psychoanalysis, becoming a critic of Sigmund Freud and his scientific and ethical standards. Crews was a prominent participant in the "Freud wars" of the 1980s and 1990s, a debate over the reputation, scholarship, and impact on the 20th century of Freud, who founded psychoanalysis. In 2017, he published Freud: The Making of an Illusion.
For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand is a 1961 work by the philosopher Ayn Rand. It is her first long non-fiction book. Much of the material consists of excerpts from Rand's novels, supplemented by a long title essay that focuses on the history of philosophy.
George Pope Morris was an American editor, poet, and songwriter.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a children's story commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve 1925. The character is inspired by a stuffed toy that Milne had bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods department store, and a bear they had viewed at London Zoo.
Kingsley Widmer (1925–2009) was an American literary critic.
The Brigadier and the Golf Widow is a collection of short fiction by John Cheever, published by Harper and Row in 1964. These sixteen works were first published individually in The New Yorker. The works also appears in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).
The World of Apples is the sixth collection of short fiction by author John Cheever, published in 1973 by Alfred A. Knopf. The ten stories originally appeared individually in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post or Playboy.
"Expelled" is a short story by John Cheever published by The New Republic in 1930. The story appears in a collection of Cheever's short fiction, Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever, published in 1994 by Academy Chicago Publishers
