In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modelled on the "case-books" often used in freshman English classes at the time, "The Pooh Perplex" contains 12 essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects" and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. With incisive essays such as "A Bourgeois Writer's Proletarian Fables" and "A la recherche du Pooh perdu", by distinguished authors such as Duns C. Penwiper and P.R. Honeycomb, "The Pooh Perplex" is sure to delight everyone who has ever had to suffer through a freshman English class - and many of their teachers, too. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters.

此书曾于2004年出版，引起小说界和学界的瞩目，更是受到广大小说爱好者的追捧。此次为修订版，作者亲自写了一篇精彩纷呈的长序《志怪应逢天雨粟》。 喜欢读小说、写小说的人应该能体贴胡适把明、清之际的许多小说家“拉拔”到和古文家等高甚至更高一等的地位上去。虽然胡适的《白话文学史》只写到中唐的元、白诗便戛然而止，压根儿没从小说上说明白：中国文学是如何“永永脱离了盲目的自然演化的老路，走上了有意创作的新路”的。然而，在《白话文学史》书成近70年后，胡适的意见乃至于诸多考证研究与观念的发明，不该只被看成是“奖掖小说”、“揄扬当代”而已。他所触及的课题倘若不被进一步发现、开展，喜欢读小说、写小说的人恐怕也“永永”不会明白：从施耐庵到吴跌人是如何…… 在《小说稗类》中，由庄子始，张大春炫技似地学舌马奎兹、戏仿司马中原……极尽耍痞嘲弄之能事。难得他如此杂学百家、博古通今，更难得有如此清晰的架构，梳理出独特的小说观。