A writer's journey

IT'S NOT EVERY day you get to interview a bona fide literary legend. Sometimes you have to make do with the likes of Neal Pollack. Not that Pollack isn't a celebrity in his own right. As a highly popular columnist for McSweeney's -- the satirical magazine published by ex-Might frontman Dave Eggers -- Pollack is, as one reporter puts it, the "hip guy du jour." Indeed, this guy's jour has most certainly arrivé.

This month, after a mere handful of issues as a funny-yet-brainy quarterly, McSweeney's will branch out into book publishing with The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, a collection of essays. By taking his book to McSweeney's instead of to a traditional publisher, Neal Pollack is becoming a literary pioneer, sailing into the unknown like a book-world Marco Polo. He also hopes the journey will make him filthy rich.

"Mr. Pollack will receive 100 percent of the profits from his book," explains a note on the McSweeney's Web site. "This is the way we will be doing our book publishing." But then the McSweeney's people -- who have been called "the prankster monkeys of American letters" and "this little po-mo literary crowd" -- aren't known for abiding by convention.

One recent afternoon, Pollack read to a small and sweaty audience outside Fenway Park in Boston, his crisp oration punctuated by cries of "Got tickets?" and "Need tickets?" The previous night, he had performed before a full house at a local theater. After a preliminary program that felt more like vaudeville than a literary event (not one, but two guitars were smashed on stage), Pollack bounded in wearing a silver Ziggy Stardust jacket, leapt on to the stage, and began to read: "If there is one rule in writing, it is this: I am the best."

This statement sets the tone for the rest of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, which makes no bones about the author's many accomplishments. Indeed, the book portrays a life full of glamour, adventure, erudition, and raw sex. Pollack, 30, tells tales of sparring with Richard Nixon and dining with Salman Rushdie. He recalls his award-winning articles about the Gulf War and poverty in Albania; his affairs with Brooke Shields and Madonna; his time as editor of the New Yorker.

Given his illustrious background, Pollack is a remarkably egalitarian writer. In a piece called "I Am Friends with a Working-Class Black Woman," he fondly recalls the time a prestigious magazine assignment resulted in an unexpected friendship and moments of real epiphany: " `It must be hard not to have a stove,' I say to old Cora. `Yeah,' she chuckles. `It makes it awful hard to cook.' "

Comeuppance

Neal Pollack makes a great many claims in his new book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature -- for example, that he inspired the Beat Poets to write poetry and had an affair with Toni Morrison. Now, with the emergence of evidence that many of Pollack's contentions are chronologically impossible, a firestorm is brewing in literary circles. The Phoenix reached some of the people closest to Pollack, who provide a more modest account of the author's life.

Bernie Pollack, father
He learned to drive before he could ride a bike. He never slept, never let his mother sleep. He was neat to a fault; everything had to be properly aligned -- not clean, just aligned. He eats nothing white; he won't eat cream cheese or sour cream or white sauce. He won't eat any sauce. We'd have spaghetti and meatballs and we'd have to wash his meatballs. He used to tell his mother everything and still does. He doesn't tell me everything, but he tells her. We knew when he had sex. I've seen Neal's work. I don't think anybody in my generation really understands it.

Joy Bergmann, friend
Neal is a generous man. He's generous with his laughter and his stories, but not with his cocktail bills. He has a conflicted personality. On one hand, he fancies himself a working-man's champion, defender of the little guy. On the other hand, he's been known to order cheeses from France. We were leaving a bar recently when a car went by and someone yelled "Yuppie!" Neal was crushed. He does not consider himself a yuppie despite his wardrobe. I don't think he's particularly fashionable, but he's often clean. The first time I met Neal, I took him to a rough-and-tumble bar called Sharon's Hillbilly Heaven. While I find it a comfortable place, Neal kept looking over his shoulder, afraid he might get attacked. He does not welcome danger.

Patrick Arden, managing editor, Chicago Reader
Neal Polk. . . . Wasn't he one of our interns?

Dave Eggers, publisher, McSweeney's
Neal is my lord and my rock and sometimes my salvation. He is a very hairy man, and he sweats profusely. Nevertheless, I consider Neal, when I am not considering him to be my lord or savior or rock, to be my lighthouse. A tall, thick lighthouse, towering over a foamy, churning sea. Oh sure, he is an old lighthouse, and yes, to hear his latest wife tell it, he may not be able to, ah, perform, as well as he used to, but still I stand by him, supporting him, propping him up if need be, just as a dutiful, devoted, younger, less hairy, better-dressed, and much more active and potent friend should do. I wish him the best in the short time he has left. As he inevitably fades away, I only want him to be happy.

-- CW

A: I was at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago once giving a reading. I saw these tapirs, and they had these enormous distended penises that just burst out of them, half the size of the animals themselves. The way they flopped around on the ground, I thought, Man. And the ardor they displayed with each other reminded me of the way I am around my lovers. I would almost certainly be a tapir.

A: That's a really stupid question. If you'd read any of my other books, you would know that not only is it good, it's a breathing history of American literature in the last 60 years. So to ask whether it's good or not is simplistic. To ask whether it's definitive -- which it is -- is probably more apt.

A: Forty-five. Well, 40 plus five volumes of poetry -- which aren't really books, more like jottings, but they're still very good.

A: I've won three National Book Awards. I won the Booker Prize (I was briefly a British citizen in the '80s). I've won some human-rights awards, and some PEN/Faulkner thingamajobbers. But I would say my NAACP Image Award is the thing I'm proudest of. Because I'm not black, yet I was recognized as a black man by the NAACP. To me, that shows that they really get what I'm about, which is solidarity.

Q: Some people say that much of the material in your book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, is made up. That you exaggerate your triumphs and play down your failures.

A: I don't know if that's necessarily true. If you read the book, I fail plenty. I mean, I don't always get the girl, I don't always get the best story. But it's not about success or failure in literature, it's about the art. Because failure can be just as successful as success, and success can be a failure, if you know what I'm saying.

Q: So your claim that you made friends with George Orwell while covering the Spanish Civil War is true?

A: It's like this: I was a kid. It's not like I was drinking with George Orwell. He was staying at my hotel, and I called him Uncle George, and every day before he went off to march with the prisoners he would come down and buy me a soda or a juice and we'd just talk; we'd talk about politics, and I'd often challenge him on various points. You know his real name is Eric Blair. . . . [Pause] You know that, right?

A writer's journey

Neal Pollack has achieved more by age 30 than most writers do in a lifetime. Now he faces a new challenge: selling his book.

By Chris Wright

Comeuppance