The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet

Yikes. I had hoped that Hoff would grow in the ten years after [b:Tao of Pooh 48757 The Tao Of Pooh (The Wisdom Of Pooh) Benjamin Hoff http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg 55188]. He did: he grew batshit.Hoff starts with a good-old-days rant about Man living in Harmony with Nature and Spirits and whatnot before a Great Separation which caused deserts to form and violence and Confucianism. Tin foil hat territory. I had to reread parts of it to see if he really meant all that... and as best I can tell, he does. Maybe in the second half of the book he goes ha-ha just kidding. I don't plan to find out.Piglet and his mafioso bodyguard wander through periodically. Then some ravings about news media and about the American educational system. I give up. I don't want my experience of Winnie-the-Pooh soiled by paranoid ramblings.

Such a disappointment. The Tao of Pooh is a great read and was hoping that The Te of Piglet would be just as good. But it wasn't. Not only did the Pooh characters act completely out of character but I am not sure what the point of the book was. It doesn't seem to have a clear goal and just sort of bounces around without ever getting to a point. I wanted to stop halfway through, but forced myself to finish.

At the beginning of this book, the author mentions how he hadn't intended to write a sequel to his original “The Tao of Pooh,” but since that book had been such a Remarkable Success, he eventually just had to. After reading this book, it seems to me that it would have been better if he hadn't. Perhaps he was short of ideas, or hurting for money, or trying to recapture earlier success, but whatever the reason it seems he produced something that didn't really even captivate himself.

Honestly, it's been a while since I've read “The Tao of Pooh,” and it's possible there was just as much political posturing as is found in this book, but I don't recall it that way. My memory says “The Tao of Pooh” was a well constructed, reasonably presented book with a coherent message. My memory says “The Tao of Pooh” achieved its goal in illustrating Taoist principles using excerpts and examples from Pooh stories.

Unfortunately, “The Te of Piglet” doesn't live up to its pedigree. It's a disjointed diatribe hiding behind an alluring premise. There's quite a bit of railing against modern society and its evils, and quite a bit about how the Eeyores, Rabbits, and Owls of the world are causing so much disharmony and destruction. There's even a bit about how Piglet is a Very Small Animal with a Very Big Heart, which seemingly is the purpose of the book, but which gets bulldozed over by the author's pre-occupation with pushing his own political agenda. And I'm saying this as someone who generally agrees with the author's political agenda.

Ultimately, I didn't buy this book to get assaulted by politics, I read it to get a unique perspective on an Eastern philosophy that I admire. And that, sadly, seems to have only been the secondary or tertiary purpose of this book for the author.

If you liked “The Tao of Pooh,” do yourself a favor and don't pick this up. In some ways, I feel this book has ruined my perception of the earlier book, and of the author himself, which is a shame.