Rating: 
Summary: Howlingly funny...
Review: ...yet shockingly frightening. It took me a while to 'get' the meaning of the pieces in this book because at first I thought they were real! The pieces are excellent. For example, after reading the 'feminist' perspective on Milne, I could have sworn that he was a misogynist. Yet it soon became apparent that these essays provide brilliant exposes of our postmodern intellectual traditions. Just as Will Rogers and Dick Gregory would read straight from the newspapers without commentary and would be met with laughs at the absurdity of the pieces read, so too did I find myself doing the same with these pieces. Not only do they present in clear fashion the 'truths' espoused in the various philosophies of our day but by reading these very philosophies into the Pooh stories, the hubris of humanity glares from between the lines. I walked away not only educated and humored but humbled. It became apparent that we can read whatever we like not only into the Pooh stories but into pretty much anything we so desire.
Rating:
Summary: Howlingly funny...
Review: ...yet shockingly frightening. It took me a while to 'get' the meaning of the pieces in this book because at first I thought they were real! The pieces are excellent. For example, after reading the 'feminist' perspective on Milne, I could have sworn that he was a misogynist. Yet it soon became apparent that these essays provide brilliant exposes of our postmodern intellectual traditions. Just as Will Rogers and Dick Gregory would read straight from the newspapers without commentary and would be met with laughs at the absurdity of the pieces read, so too did I find myself doing the same with these pieces. Not only do they present in clear fashion the 'truths' espoused in the various philosophies of our day but by reading these very philosophies into the Pooh stories, the hubris of humanity glares from between the lines. I walked away not only educated and humored but humbled. It became apparent that we can read whatever we like not only into the Pooh stories but into pretty much anything we so desire.
Rating:
Summary: True, all too true
Review: Correct me if I'm wrong. Chapter 1: FELICIA MARRONNEZ = Derrida; Chapter 2: VICTOR S. FASSELL = Foucault; Chapter 3: CARLA GULAG: Fredric Jameson; Chapter 4: SISERA CATHETER = radical feminism (Brownmiller?); Chapter 5: ORPHEUS BRUNO = the one and only Harold Bloom; Chapter 6: DAT NUFFA DAT = Edward Said; Chapter 7: RENEE FRANCIS = envionmental criticism; DOLORES MALATESTA = pop psychology; Chapter 9: BIGGLORIA3 = studies in popular culture; Chaper 10 DUDLEY CRAVAT III = a cross between Roger Kimball and William F. Buckley; Chapter 11: N. MACK HOBBS = Richard Rorty???
Simply the best piece of satire since ... well, since The Pooh Perplex.
Sid Cundiff
s.cundiff@att.net
Rating:
Summary: Witty, pointed, good-natured satire
Review: Excellent skewering of a branch of academia that seems to set itself up for it. Crews put a lot of work into these essays, which are clever, intelligent, and extremely funny. He isn't nearly so vicious in his satire as many of his speakers (and their real-life counterparts) are in their literary-political maneuvering, but he exposes the void at the heart of much modern literary criticism where the work itself used to live. Pooh is as good as any other subject when the theory drives the criticism, which is why this book works so well.
Rating:
Summary: Witty, pointed, good-natured satire
Review: Excellent skewering of a branch of academia that seems to set itself up for it. Crews put a lot of work into these essays, which are clever, intelligent, and extremely funny. He isn't nearly so vicious in his satire as many of his speakers (and their real-life counterparts) are in their literary-political maneuvering, but he exposes the void at the heart of much modern literary criticism where the work itself used to live. Pooh is as good as any other subject when the theory drives the criticism, which is why this book works so well.
Rating: 
Summary: A Well Penned Satire
Review: I enjoyed this one, though the first one, The Pooh Perplex, is much more light-hearted and fun to read. Beware, some people might not understand that this is a farce and that you're supposed to be laughing at all the wacky ways we humans have devised to dissect, examine, and critique the universe in our isolated academic ivory towers. But as long as you don't mind people looking at you strangely as you laugh out loud on the bus, you'll be just fine.
Rating:
Summary: A Well Penned Satire
Review: I enjoyed this one, though the first one, The Pooh Perplex, is much more light-hearted and fun to read. Beware, some people might not understand that this is a farce and that you're supposed to be laughing at all the wacky ways we humans have devised to dissect, examine, and critique the universe in our isolated academic ivory towers. But as long as you don't mind people looking at you strangely as you laugh out loud on the bus, you'll be just fine.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for everyone.
Review: If, on the other hand, you are a member of the target audience (those who've been subjected to Academic Literary Criticism and who find the pretentious idiocy rampant in such to be anywhere between annoying and amusing) then this is definitely a five-star book for you. For anyone who picks it up because they enjoy "Winnie The Pooh", and figure anything that relates to that favorite should be a good read, but who HASN'T plenty of experience dealing with literary criticism, it will be fairly hard going, and much of the humor will be lost as they won't recognize the schools of academic thought being pilloried.
Rating:
Summary: silly academics
Review: Literary Criticism so long ago slipped over the edge into self parody that when I first found an old dog-eared copy of The Pooh Perplex at a book sale many years ago it took me more than a few pages to figure out whether it was meant to be serious or not. In a series of essays, various critics, of dubious but seemingly impressive pedigree, read the Pooh stories through the distorted lenses of their own literary/political/philosophical/psychological perspectives. It turned out of course that the book, published in 1964, had been the work of a young English professor at Berkeley (of all places) and was a parody, skewering several of the then current schools of criticism. Now, nearly forty years later, retired from academia, Professor Crews gives today's critics the satirical drubbing they so richly deserve in this manufactured set of lectures to the Modern Language Association convention. Happily, this second effort is just as funny as the first, though it is somewhat depressing to realize that his targets have become even easier to poke fun at because, one shudders at the thought, their theories are even more ridiculous than those of their predecessors. I'll not pretend to understand all the nuances of what Professor Crews has written; heck, I don't even recognize all the schools of thought he's sending up, nor all the specific people he seems to have targeted. Everyone will discern Harold Bloom in the person of Orpheus Bruno, whose lecture is titled The Importance of Being Portly, and whose last three books are titled : My Vico, My Shakespeare, My God!; What You Don't Know Hurts Me; and Read These Books. And one assumes that Dudley Cravat III, whose contribution, Twilight of the Dogs, is one long bellow against the "sickness unto death" of the modern university, must incorporate at least a significant touch of William Bennett. Knowing who the victims are in these instances definitely adds to the enjoyment. Unfortunately (no, make that fortunately) most of the other models for these characters will be so obscure to anyone outside academia that the reader, at least this reader, won't know recognize them. You can figure out, without too much trouble, that specific lectures are aimed at Deconstruction, Marxism, Feminism, Queer Theory, Postcolonialism, Evolutionary Psychology and so forth. Much of the enjoyment of the book lies in the way Crews can make the Pooh stories fit these absurd theories. He'll leave you half convinced that the Hundred Acre Wood is alternately a seething pit of repressed homosexual longings or pedophiliac torture; the oppressed colony of a brutal imperialist master; and a laboratory of Darwinism. The very capacity of these simple children's stories to bear the weight of each of these ideologies only serves to undermine them all. Such infinitely plastic criticisms must ultimately be about the theories themselves, not about the text that is supposedly under consideration. One final feature of the book is particularly amusing, and especially frightening. Though the lectures are obviously made up, the footnotes appear to all refer to genuine sources, with titles like "The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination" and "The Vestal and the Fasces: Hegel, Lacan, Property, and the Feminine". I suppose someone trying to complete a doctoral thesis will write just about anything, but, please God, tell me no one has actually ever read them. It all makes for very funny reading, but with a serious subtext. This is the kind of garbage that kids are being taught, with a straight face, in our schools today. That scares the heck out of me. Hopefully Professor Crews will keep that skewer pointy. We need someone to puncture the pretensions of these self-important intellectual nitwits. GRADE : A
Rating:
Summary: A "hunny pot" of wicked fun
Review: Reading this book is like attending a stuffy academic lecture panel with your best friend. You've been there--just when you feel yourself lulled off to sleep by those boring clowns, your friend whispers something outrageous, and you respond with a raucous laugh. Members of the startled audience turn to glare at you. You look toward the real cause of this disturbance, only to find your friend has slipped off, leaving you all alone. But, you forgive your friend, and will seek their company again, and again, because they make you laugh. Don't worry if your public school education was as incomplete as mine. Blissful ignorance of intellectualism will not hinder your enjoyment of this book. Professor Crews writes to all levels of humor. You will smile at the names of the panelists and have a chuckle at their credentials. (One of my favorites was "The Exxon Valdez chair")You are in serious danger of the raucous guffaw, however, when one of the panel members reminds you of an actual person. Professor Crews reminds me of Professor Schickle from the University of Michigan. Schickle "discovered" a lost member of the Bach family named "PDQ Bach." Both men delight in poking fun at members of their profession. You must guard yourselves well from educators such as these, because you may learn something when you have finished laughing. Highly recommended.
| 
