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Pooh!
Actually, it seems the book might be worth reading as a brief guided tour of certain sorts of contemporary intellectual manipulation: Pooh-poohing postmodernism (on Postmodern Pooh, a long delayed sequel by Frederick Crews to his Pooh Perplex, a 1964 take-off on the schools of literary criticism then current). The man spent two years researching the book, and the essays are comical but the footnotes supporting them, often from big-name critics, are real. One can laugh at the stuff, but the theories certified experts find appealing are — sometimes unfortunately — important. Posted by Jim Kalb at November 12, 2002 11:26 AM | Send Comments
I read the article, and then checked the reviews which the American edition of the book received in the liberal press last year. They were uniformly favorable (Washington Post, SF Chronicle, etc.). Why don’t the liberals who write for literate laymen in the daily papers feel compelled to defend the postmodern literary critics in the academy? Put another way, why are they praising a book with a conservative, traditional theme? On the other hand, book reviewers, on the left and right, can praise Crews’ satire, and it doesn’t make a bit of difference in the graduate schools. WW Posted by: Wm. Wleklinski on November 12, 2002 3:00 PM |