chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (01/26/84)
. <- squashed bug <- (wishful thought) >My real flame though is for "The Tao of Pooh". I loved Milne and still do >so I picked up tToP, hoping for some more of the charm of Pooh--WRONG!!! >The first two chapters were ok, pretty condescending but ok. From there, >the author seems to take the position that the essence of Tao is to heap >scorn on anyone who isn't "pure" (or whatever) enough for him. Even >Rabbit--the most unsympathetic character that Milne was capable of >creating--deserves better than the handling he got here. TToP is not perfect. No book of Philosophy is, even when written by experts. Benjamin Hoff is no expert, and there are times when he stretches a point in an attempt to prove it. Now, having said all of this, why do I like this book anyway? For me at least, this book gave me some new insights into a favorite character of mine in literature. I also feel that the negative characterizations of Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore were a little overdone, but if you look, Hoff ignored the other positive character - there is essentially no discussion of Christopher Robin at all! What this tells me is that he saw Pooh as a vision of Taoist perfection (if such can truly exist) and wrote the book in a very black/white orientation. Since he didn't want to impact the perfection of the Simply Little Bear, he ignored any positive features of the other characters (and ignored Robin completely, since he is another white character). I DO believe the Pooh can be construed as a Taoist construct (I don't know if A.A.Milne designed it that way, however). I don't believe that the other characters are examples of Taoist mistakes, and I think that is where Hoff blows it by trying to force them to be so. >I confess that I don't know Tao--maybe the author's position is correct. >If so, I want no part. In any case, I think Milne's heirs should sue for >"character assassination". I have done some study of Eastern religions in my earlier days, so the basic tenets of Taoism (and the other vinegar samplers) are familiar to me. For someone used to Christian based religions there are a large number of differences that are not easy to assimilate. The major difference is trying to remember that Eastern religions are actually better defined as 'Teachings of Life' instead of 'Teachings of God'. This gives them the dubious honor of predating Miss Manners by a few millenia. Eastern religion also seems (to me) to try to teach a reliance on self, while Christion religions tend to emphasize a reliance upon God. I am NOT going to get into a discussion of the pro's and con's of religions, since the only requirement for a religion is that it works for YOU! Anyway, I have linked this discussion into net.books, because if it is going to shift away from spelling onto tToP, it probably belongs there. If you want to followup on this further, please remember to remove net.flame from the distribution. chuq -- From the house at Pooh Corner: Chuq (a Silly Old Bear) {fortune,menlo70}!nsc!chuqui have you hugged your Pooh today? The difficult we gave up on yesterday, the impossible we are giving up on now.
flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn) (01/27/84)
If you like Pooh, you'll like Frederick Crewe's "The Pooh Perplex," a collection of literary criticism that is a parody of college literature texts - heavy plot analysis, character analysis, lots of Freudian implications. Very funny.
neal@denelcor.UUCP (01/31/84)
************************************************************************** Chuqui, First a couple of "confessions": I didn't make it through the whole tToP, I could only handle the first four chapters. So, I am in no position to comment on what he didn't say. I wasn't trying for a rational criticism, my response was in net.flame (I hadn't noticed that you had posted your article to both newsgroups). As such, I came out swinging from my gut and felt justified in doing so. Reading your response though, has started me thinking about why I reacted the way I did. (Thanks for that by the way--and you're right, this has become entirely too rational for net.flame.) > What this >tells me is that he saw Pooh as a vision of Taoist perfection (if such can >truly exist) and wrote the book in a very black/white orientation. I think you have the essence of my objections right here--Taoist perfection(???) Again, I claim no particular familiarity with Tao; but the notion of perfection seems pretty out-of-place in any Eastern religion/philosophy as does a black/white orientation. Unless you mean black/white in the sense of yin and yang--but tToP offered me no sense of the balance that yin and yang is all about. I think that lack of balance is another way of stating my objection. And my apologies to both of you if chapters 5-n would restore that. >The difficult we gave up on yesterday, the impossible we are giving up on now. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ | | | | | | | | | | (Hear, hear) Regards, Neal Weidenhofer Denelcor, Inc. <hao|csu-cs|brl-bmd>!denelcor!neal