Pooh, Not Poo: On the Limits of Literary Criticism
This creative writing professor reminds us to always look back to the original
I’ve been packing up my office in preparation for my imminent retirement as an English and Creative Writing professor.
The number of books daunts. I must be selective.
Will I want to reread them?
My worn copy of Frederick C. Crews’ The Pooh Perplex is a keeper.
Judging by the first of my many scrawled phone numbers inside, I was living in my parents’ home as an undergrad. I think I was introduced to it in an Introduction to Criticism course.
But I recall the book, not the teacher.
Strata of notes in different colors, cursive, printed, bolded, block text…it’s positively archaeological.
The table of contents is annotated in green pen. In the late eighties, I used it as an end-of-term text in a special seminar section of a freshman academic writing course.
The book purports to be a series of case studies on A.A. Milne’s childhood classic: Marxist, New Critical, and bibliographic.
Though multi-authored, it was devised by Crews, who found himself up against the wall without requisite publications as he neared a tenure hearing. The droll compilation, first published in 1963, cemented his career.
Since the freshman writing course, I have used The Pooh Perplex repeatedly in Creative Writing courses. I start by asking how many know Winnie-the-Pooh, no longer a slam dunk, as we have so many international students.
We hash out a plot summary, the setting and a cast of characters.
Does anyone notice anything about gender? A possible gender imbalance? Aha! The only female is Kanga. Could one character be a Christ figure?
Students puzzle over the name Christopher Robin and then wonder about Eeyore. We chat and leaf through Winnie-the-Pooh.
There is a method to my madness.
When I introduce Crews, I hone in on one particular essay: Myron Masterson’s “Poisoned Paradise: the Underside of Pooh.”
In his brash opening paragraph, Masterson thanks:
all the people who have made this article possible: Karl Marx, St. John of the Cross, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sacco and Vanzetti, Sigmund Freud, and C. G. Jung.
Breaking the fourth wall, he takes the reader to task for wondering at his “eclecticism”.
His analysis bleeds and breeds personality. His claim to have “discovered the real meaning of Winnie-the-Pooh” is funny amidst the plethora of essays, each focusing on its own school of criticism.
And this is just the first paragraph!
This volume is such a great way to introduce students to poetry, intended audience, literature in general, tone, style, interpretation and criticism. And Masterson’s cherry-picked quotations allow discussion of the primary text.
What can be twisted to say what?
I’m taken back to a Children’s Literature course. The earnest professor introduced us to Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.
I recall his hesitation remarking on a queen’s pricked finger. Apparently, it equated with … menstrual blood? Squirm-inducing. My disbelief then has never completely gone away.
I’m distrustful of theory, enjoying more the creative text.
Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. Criticism often reveals more about the critic than the work apparently being dissected.
Crew’s Perplex is satire that functions as parody (or vice versa).
Following its introduction in Creative Writing, my students have written delightful parodies, often of poetry or fiction rather than literary criticism, but they have a beginning understanding of criticism, and of its pitfalls.
Look to the original remains my mantra.
My hundreds of books of rhetorics and literary criticism in the discard pile, after forty years of teaching, I’m still not exactly sure what semiotics or hermeneutics really mean.
And not caring one whit.
This fall, my colleagues will be mounting a new English degree that blends criticism and academic writing with creative writing central to it — not an ugly step-cousin.
Crews’ work has never been timelier or more topical.
Hmmm, maybe I should stay?
No, I’d rather reread Winnie-the-Pooh, other children’s literature, poetry, novels, and write my own.
Good criticism propels us back to the text. Great criticism inspires us to create new work.
Work Cited
Crews, Frederick C. The Pooh Perplex : A Freshman Casebook. E. P. Dutton & Co., 1963.
Available here.
