Customer Reviews

Pooh and the Millennium : In Which the Bear of Very Little Brain Explores the Ancient Mysteries at the Turn of the Century

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Ah, the Un-Bear-able Lightness Ursine. Read this over New Years, albeit 12 years too late for Y2K, but just in time for the upcoming Mayan Apocalypse. ;-) Not quite up to the gold standard of Winnieology as found in Frederick C. Crewes The Pooh Perplex : A Freshman Casebook, but what can one expect from a book not written by D. H. Lawrence! Williams' in depth analysis brings a smile to the lips and the occasional new age guffaw. Others may Pooh Pooh, but scholars of the mysteries of the 100 Acre Wood will delight in the intellectual skewering of such diverse topics as Astrology, the Tarot, Druidism and Alchemy.

Contained therein, tra-la-la, the 9 essays, tiddley-tum, which variously link our favourite bear to Arthurian legend, examines Pooh as the innocent savant and his companions as symbolic archetypes, concluding with a celebration of Bear as Bard. A. A. Milne was a very Wise Writer, and so is Williams who thoughtfully included several of the E. H. Shepherd illustrations which he comments on as well, and rightly so as they are the quintessential gloss to the text.

There are moments when True Wisdom is revealed, whether it is in Rabbit's angst filled wrestling with identity ("Is anybody at home?" called Pooh very loudly. "No!" said a voice... and later "It is you," says Pooh.) or in the author's revelation that Pooh controls the Philosopher's Stone. And when Pooh reads the notices on Owl's door (Owl representing scholarly wisdom), he reads it both left to right and then right to left - a subtle clue that both Pooh and Owl are inestimably learned in Hebrew and Qaballistic gematria - a Jewish form of sudoku. Strong stuff!

Enjoyable yes, but it drags a bit in the middle. The problem with in-jokes is that you have be familiar enough with the "in" to get it, and sequels ( this is Williams' 2nd outing , and Williams owes his inspiration to Crewes) are rarely as good as the original. My rating of the book would be a slightly tepid 3.5/5, however it's worth a look.