Neal
Pollack
Powell's
City of Books
1005
W Burnside St., 228-4651
7:30
pm Friday, Oct. 13
Free
Neal Pollack's
personal site featuring some of his Chicago Reader
pieces: www.nealpollack.com
Satire of
the Neal Pollack site: www.neilpollock.com
McSweeney's
website: www.mcsweeneys.net
Satire of
the McSweeney's website: www.mcsweeneys.org
FoE site (chronic
detailing of Friends of Eggers written in an obsessive but
admirable way by a 17-year-old California man/boy named
Gary Baum): www.aphrodigitaliac.com/mm
Do you know Neal Pollack? Maybe you do, maybe you don't;
there are actually two of them. The first Neal Pollack is
a 30-year-old Chicagoan who writes profiles of little but
important people for the esteemed Chicago Reader. The
second Neal Pollack is a creation of the first Neal Pollack
and is America's Greatest Living Writer, the author of the
recently released The Neal Pollack Anthology of American
Literature. The book, a satire on the publishing world's
giants of literature (think Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway
and Tom Wolfe), recounts the Great Neal Pollack's adventures
covering every important cultural event in American history
since World War II and his particular way of writing about
everyday people from a deeply egocentric perspective.
The collection of essays is an experiment of sorts. It's
the first work published by McSweeney's, a literary journal
and website masterminded by Dave Eggers (of Staggering
Genius fame) that is eschewing the normal rituals of
advertising and financial advances and is instead placing
all profits in Pollack's lap. WW Arts & Culture
editor Caryn B. Brooks spoke with Pollack about the challenges
of satirizing one's own name, the satirization of satire,
the realities of being in the McSweeney's posse and hijinks-packed
readings.
Willamette Week: So am I going to be talking
to you today as Neal Pollack, America's greatest living
writer, or Neal Pollack, the writer for the Chicago Reader?
Neal Pollack: I spend almost all my time as myself. I'm
trying not to turn myself into a caricature.
But you've done that already.
Oh. Well, I can always turn myself back. I don't plan to
spend the rest of my life as the caricature, as the character.
I have other writing that I want to do.
Do you think that in lampooning your name you may have
poisoned the power of your name for other endeavors?
That's an interesting question. I guess I didn't spend
a whole lot of time thinking about it, which may not have
been the wisest thing to do. But I don't think so. I don't
see why just because I'm parodying myself, I can't go back
to practicing it in some way after this, after the smoke
clears. I may never be able to cover Moscow for The New
York Times--but I don't speak Russian anyway.
Describe a recent reading.
Let's see, on Monday night in Ann Arbor, my wife and I
pulled into the parking lot of the delicatessen at like
5 o'clock, and there was some confusion there, because there
was another reading at the delicatessen the same day. A
woman from San Francisco who was promoting a book about
gourmet cheese recipes. So people weren't really sure--some
people thought that I was her or that that was the book,
and they were a little confused.
Are you in character pretty much the whole time at your
readings?
I just do whatever I feel like that day. I'm myself at
the reading. I do a couple of lines like "I'm the greatest
living American writer," but mostly I'm not this character.
When I appear, I'm just me and we're just hanging out. I
don't have the energy or the interest for playing the character--I'm
not Father Guido Sarducci.
Much like Andre the Giant, you and Eggers are seen as
having this literary posse, this very...
Did Andre the Giant have a literary posse?
No, he just had a posse. But my point is that there's
a young man out there who keeps this website up that's completely
dedicated to the antics of friends of Eggers. You've seen
this...
I have.
Do you feel like you're in a clique? And do you feel
like your clique is being dissed unfairly?
First, I am aware of the site. I think it's funny that
he does it. I think he does a pretty good job, too. He gets
some facts wrong. He'd be a lot better off if he just emailed
or called people and asked them questions. I might be willing
from time to time to answer...I don't know, maybe I wouldn't,
I don't know.
I have some quick questions, first for "the greatest
author" and then for you as the real Neal. Just take a shot
at them. OK, Neal the Greatest: First love?
Wally Trumball. I talk about him in the book. He was my
roommate at Exeter. He taught me what it meant to be a man
and to love. And he was killed in 1947 in the Philippines.
I still dream about him and see his visage hovering over
my bed at least once a week.
OK, Real Neal--same question.
My first girlfriend in high school was an exchange student
from Switzerland. She was really sexy and really, really
smart. And we sat around and had a lot of pseudointellectual
high-school conversations, like "Economics aren't real!,"
and then we'd go make out for like three hours. But she
left me because she fell in love with an Afghan Freedom
Fighter. Last I heard she was getting her PhD at the University
of Bologna in philosophy.
OK, Neal the Greatest. Least favorite war?
Vietnam, for sure. Just because I covered wars. I was really
just a tourist in the Spanish Civil War. World War II had
something real and romantic, there was definite cause there.
But Vietnam was completely pointless. Even though the drugs
were good, it was really hard for me to see young men, the
generation right behind mine, just getting plowed down.
It was terrifying. In fact, that was the only war that I
actually fought in. I would drop my notebook from time to
time and just go berserk in the jungle and shoot whatever
was moving.
OK, the Real Neal. Same question.
Well, I was in college during the Gulf War. And I protested
against that, I just thought that was the most ludicrous
spectacle. And you know George Bush just lied and lied every
day, and it was just such an obvious display of bald, stupid
self-interested jingoism. I think the Gulf War is sort of
like the Spanish American War of the last century.
OK, last one. Neal the Greatest. Favorite line from
a movie.
Well, I ghostwrote the screenplay for North by Northwest.
So I would say pretty much anything spoken in that would
be my favorite. I can't really pick because...it's a really
good
screenplay.
How about the Real Neal?
OK, at the end of the old Hunchback of Notre Dame,
Charles Laughton is standing up there on the parapet and
he turns to the gargoyle and says: "Why am I not made of
stone like thee?" I just love that. To me it's like
the greatest moment in the history of movies. And then the
camera just pulls back on Paris and that was it.
I think we all ask ourselves that once a day.
It's a good question! Out of the mouth of hunchbacks....
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