 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 2003, Postmodern Pooh. [1]
Frederick Crews is 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 author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and as a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a French literary critic.
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John Simmons Barth is an American writer who is best known for his postmodernist and metafictional fiction.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a children’s book by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Published in 1926, it is a collection of short stories about 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).
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.
Edmund Clarence Stedman was an American poet, critic, essayist, banker, and scientist.
Richard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a 1977 American animated musical anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It is the 22nd Disney animated feature film and was first released on a double bill with The Littlest Horse Thieves on March 11, 1977.
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.
Winnie the Pooh, the fictional teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne, is one of the most popular characters adapted for film and television by The Walt Disney Company. Disney first received certain licensing rights to the Winnie the Pooh stories, characters, and trademarks from Stephen Slesinger, Inc. and the estate of A. A. Milne in 1961.
Frederick Campbell Crews is an American essayist and literary critic. Professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews is 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 (1966), a discussion of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He received popular attention for The Pooh Perplex (1963), a book of satirical essays parodying contemporary casebooks. 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.
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard.
Orville Prescott was the main book reviewer for The New York Times for 24 years.
Kafka's Prayer is a 1947 book-length analysis of the novelist Franz Kafka and his works by Paul Goodman. Using Freudian and Reichian psychoanalysis, Goodman assesses the philosophical and religious significance of Kafka's aphoristic statements and three novels. He levels an anarchist societal critique against social institutions borne from neuroticism. Goodman used the book, published by Vanguard Press, to grapple with the religious implications of psychoanalysis and transition from a career writing on Jewish concerns to a period that would culminate in his collaboration on the founding work of the gestalt therapy movement.
Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear is a 2015 children's book written by Canadian author Lindsay Mattick and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. The non-fiction book is framed as a story Mattick is telling to her son. Her great-grandfather, Harry Colebourn bought a bear on his way to fight in World War I, donating the bear to a zoo where it became the inspiration for the character of Winnie-the-Pooh. Finding Winnie was thoroughly researched by both Blackall and Mattick. The book's writing and illustrations were well reviewed and it won the 2016 Caldecott Medal.
Winnie ille Pu is a 1958 translation of Winnie-the-Pooh into Latin by Alexander Lenard. The book was an unexpected hit, becoming the first foreign-language book to make The New York Times Best Seller list. Its success inspired the translation of a number of other children's books into Latin.
Kingsley Widmer (1925–2009) was an American literary critic.
Between 1954 and the start of the 21st century, there was intense literary hostility to J. R. R. Tolkien, directed especially to his bestselling work The Lord of the Rings.