In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters. "In twelve glittering, brightly malicious essays [Crews] has pole-axed and then neatly eviscerated twelve varieties of currently fashionable literary criticism. . . . Anyone who values his franchise as a literary highbrow . . . will have to be able to quote The Pooh Perplex ." -- Orville Prescott ― New York Times "A rather gentle lampoon of literary criticism." -- Carole Cadwalladr ― The Guardian Published On: 2006-08-07 "That rare find—a genuine satire. It is devastating, diabolical, and delightful." ― Hartford Times In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters. In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters. Frederick Crews (1933-2024) was professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His many books include The Critics Bear It Away: American Fiction and the Academy , The Random House Handbook , and Postmodern Pooh .