The Pooh Perplex (1964) by Frederick C. Crews is one of the books I’ve had longest on my shelves unread – about fifteen years – but I knew its day would come one day. And I’m rather pleased that it waited this long, because I certainly wouldn’t have understood or appreciated it as much fifteen years ago. As it is, it was a complete gem.
The book takes the form of a casebook for the children’s books of A.A. Milne – particularly, of course, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. Crews has crafted satires of different types of literary essay that are exquisitely done. We have the critic who diminishes all the others who’ve gone before him (from which the excerpt below). We have the Freudian, who reads dark things into honey jars. We have the essayist who only really writes to say how much better D.H. Lawrence is. There’s a Marxist, a context critic (who despises New Criticism), and the essayist who overwrites everything so confusingly that each sentence is a labyrinth. My favourite section was the one which identified Eeyore as the Christ figure of the stories.
We have, then, seen how Milne meant Winnie-the-Pooh to be read, and we can now appreciate the subtlety of technique that has beguiled three generations of fools into imagining that the book is nothing more than a group of children’s stories. Indeed, the more we ponder Pooh‘s complexity, the more we must wonder how any child could possibly enjoy these tales. Only a thorough versing in the Hierarchy of Heroism, combined with advanced training in the ironic reading of literary personae and a familiarity with multivalent symbolism, can prepare us adequately to approach the book.
To be honest, I have no idea how much Crews’ book would appeal to someone who hasn’t read the sort of essays collected in this book – but I can vouch that, as someone who spent many years at university becoming rather familiar with all the types of essay represented in The Pooh Perplex, that it is done brilliantly, with exactly the right amount of exaggeration to show how devastating the satire is.
Oh my this sound hilarious!
Sounds highly entertaining! Loved The Tao of Pooh, of more recent vintage, another funny take on these already timeless stories.
This sounds like so much fun. What a wonderful world we live in that books like this even make it to publication!
I have loved this book practically since it first came out. Crews’s collection of his reviews of other literary critics (The Critics Bear It Away) is also great fun — he really enjoys going after points of view he considers preposterous — and insightful as well.
Unfortunately, he more recently wrote a sequel to The Pooh Perplex, representing what he thinks would be found in a present-day casebook, and it’s not remotely as good as the original; in fact it’s rather sour. The pastiches doesn’t seem to me as good, particular because he seems completely disenchanted with the current state of literary criticism and can render it only with contempt. (The satire in the first Pooh book, however devastating, was good-natured by comparison.)
I did not realise there was a sequel, but I might not be seeking it out, based on that! I agree, there was nothing mean-spirited in The Pooh Perplex.