The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature: The Collected Writings of Neal Pollack

by Neal Pollack

Overview

Neal Pollack has been the Greatest Living American Writer across six decades, seven continents, and ten wives. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award (twice), and the Premio Simon Bolivar for contributions to the people's struggle in Latin America. In 1985, Pollack's writing was declared "beyond our meager standards" by the Swedish Academy

With the publication of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, the definitive collection of his work in English, a new generation of readers is set to discover nothing less than the ultimate meaning of human existence on earth. This astonishing work of fictitious nonfiction, the funniest and most creatively styled postmodernist confection of its time, has been universally praised as the best book ever written except for maybe Don Quixote and The Shipping News. The Anthology — now expanded, updated, and thoroughly repaginated — answers, once and for all, the question that has plagued American society in general, and literary critics in particular, since Neal Pollack was born: "Who is Neal Pollack?" At last, we know.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060004538
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/05/2002
Series:	Harper Perennial
Edition description:	1ST PERENI
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.55(d)
Age Range:	3 Years

About the Author

Neal Pollack is the author of the bestselling memoir Alternadad and several books of satirical fiction, including The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and the rock novel Never Mind the Pollacks. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Albania of My Existence

I've been going to bed lately on a pile of jagged stones covered only by a thin cotton blanket half-eaten by moths. This is one of the worst possible sleeping arrangements I could imagine. Sometimes I wonder how things got this way, but I have to remember that I am a journalist, novelist, radio producer, and poet, and I am here in Albania to find out what life is really like for a family in the poorest country in Europe. I have personally borne witness to much human suffering. People here are beset by unwanted refugees, obscure diseases, and limited opportunities to express themselves through fashion. I must tell you: Things are not good.

We had dirt for lunch today. All twenty-three of us. Jumanji, the patriarch of this family, is a short, bald, armless man who looks older than his eighty-seven years. He tells me that dirt has been of short supply in Albania lately, and he worries about his family's diet. I have tried to make our food taste better using some of the skills that I learned at the Culinary Institute of America, but with no success. My considerable abilities seem useless here; I am a Rhodes scholar, but no one in Albania has even heard of Cambridge, much less of England.

Although this family's house has no plumbing, consistent heat source, or exterior walls, they do have satellite television. I was tired today from all my reporting, so I relaxed by watching CNN's Eastern European Entertainment Minute. I saw that a good friend of mine had won a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, which made methink about the awards and honors I've gained in my life, the trophies, the ribbons, and the cash. In the face of this Albanian poverty and hopelessness, they all seem somehow trivial now. Do you know what I mean?

I wake up early this morning and watch the village children play soccer with the bloated carcass of a cat. I've been here so long that this kind of thing doesn't bother me anymore, so I join in. I score three goals and make a game-winning save. The children gather around me and ask about my life in the more bohemian sections of Brooklyn. I show them a picture of my girlfriend.

"She is very beautiful," says one of them.

"Yes," I say, "and very wealthy. She is a human-rights activist who has also written three prize-winning novels."

Later, a man is impaled on a stake in the town square, while a desperate, ravaging mob tears at his clothes to wear as their own. I want to ask: For what crime was this man sentenced to die? But I do not speak Albanian.

I am leaving tomorrow. The town has pooled its remaining money together, three dollars, to throw me a farewell party. I hug Grandma Ninotchka, my favorite family member, for a long time. She works twenty hours a day, six days a week as a plutonium miner to feed her family, and spends her precious free time, what little there is, as a volunteer gravedigger.

"You have brought a beacon of hope into our dark and miserable world," she says. "And God bless you for not stealing my oatmeal like the man from the New York Times. "

I am not prepared for the immense wave of emotion that I am experiencing. Nothing I went through in college, not even having dinner with two presidents, could have possible prepared me for this. I cry silent tears, and pray for the people of this sorrow-ridden country, and for myself.

(From Red Curtain, Blue People, 1985)

The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature. Copyright © by Neal Pollack. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

What People are Saying About This

Judith Shulevitz

“Not terrible at all.”

Interviews

Exclusive Author Essay
This book is the story of one family's struggle over alcoholism and Nazism during the Depression. It is a coming-of-age tale of one young man's sexual awakening, and a memoir of life among the Gypsies. I spin a magical tapestry of the American spirit, explaining how the son of immigrants rose to prominence and became the greatest living American writer through sheer talent, pluck, and well-placed sexual liaisons with Truman Capote, among others.

My mother was killed by Cossacks in 1917, but revived by a necromancer. She later met my father, an Argentine freighter captain, at bordello in New Orleans, where she was working as a madam to pay her way through dental school. I was born a few years later. The most important event in my life occurred at age six, when I published my first book, Homage to Orwell, in which I dismissed my subject's work as the "ravings of a lunatic hack," adding that "there is no such thing as talking animals."

Much later in life, I worked with Kenny Gamble and his partner, Huff, and became a primary architect of The Sound of Philadelphia (TSOP), producing such bands as the O'Jays, the Soul Spinners, and Patti LaBelle on Fire. As the protagonist in The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, I don't really talk about those musical experiences, preferring instead to focus on my never-successful plot to steal Hemingway's diaries and pawn them off on the public as my own.

Paris in the '50s was a delight. Jean-Paul, Simone, and I would sit at cafes for hours, arguing about who would pick up the check. One summer, Burroughs and I drove to Tangiers. Paul Bowles wasn't home, so we beat up his houseboy and stole his opium. Gore Vidal caught a flight and met us in Marrakech, where we all had a contest to see who could complete a novel the fastest. I won.

In the end, this book is the story of one man's struggle with himself, and with nature, and with the beautiful geisha who became his wife. A secret drowning and a forgotten key that unlocks the closet of forever also become plot points, inspired by my aunt Estelle's inspiring attempts to become the first woman to visit Florence in the summer and stay at a nice hotel with reasonable rates.

The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, however, is not a political book. There is nothing controversial about it, and it should be purchased by readers of all ages. The central themes -- petty, jealous rivalry, careerism at all costs, infidelity, target marketing, and loyalty to one's president and god -- appeal to people of all nationalities and faiths. Also, it is short, funny, and I love you. (Neal Pollack)

Editorial Reviews

Not terrible at all.” — Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

Not terrible at all.

Judith Shulevitz

Take a wild ride through the collected writings of Neal Pollack, a bawdy bard whose surreal, darkly comic pieces have been hailed by Dave Eggers and the rest of the McSweeney's crowd. The Anthology, a work of "fictionalized nonfiction," is a wicked send-up of the literary elite. Through his egotistic, Pulitzer Prize–winning alter ego, Pollack describes his exploits as a journalist, poet, and novelist, managing to mock convention at every turn.

bn.com editor