Postmodern Pooh

Book excerpt: “A brilliant and savagely witty skewing of the combatants on all sides of the academic culture wars . . . pitch-perfect . . . incisive and hilarious.” —The Washington Post Decades ago, a slim parody of academic literary criticism called The Pooh Perplex became a surprise bestseller. Here, Frederick Crews has written an ingenious new satire in the same vein. Purporting to be the proceedings of a forum on Pooh convened at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention, Postmodern Pooh brilliantly parodies the academic fads and figures that hold sway in a new millennium, from poststructuralist Marxism to cultural studies. “Crews made me laugh until I wept.” —Philadelphia Inquirer “A fresh takedown of lit-crit theories.” —The New York Times “Sparkling wit and brilliant parodies.” —Los Angeles Times “Really good academic fun.” —The Boston Globe “Crews sinks his fangs into more recent movements, such as deconstructionism, new historicism, radical feminism, trauma studies, postcolonialism, and cybercriticism [and] magnanimously skewer[s] radicals and archconservatives alike . . . will keep anyone interested in literary scholarship in stitches.” —Library Journal