Our Greatest Writer, His Lesbian Sister, and the Little People

"We wait for our
literary heroes,
and then we have
sex with them."














Since I am unable to do anything on time, and trail behind the cultural Zeitgeist like the Griswold's dog, it is time for me to review Neal Pollack. While I may not be as bloated as Mailer, or debased as Oates, how can I hope to approach The Light? There is no hope, but I can trail behind, hoping to get the cast-offs and hangers-on. Pollack documents his dominance of American Letters in much the same way Spinal Tap ruled heavy metal.

Which is to say, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature is satire. That line is hard to distinguish in a world full of Bill O'Reilly, James Frey, Oprah, and countless lying blowhards. As Tom Tomorrow has often noted, reality is outpacing satire. None the less, Pollack provides us with this dubious self-portrait that reads like the Greatest Hits of Roland Hedley. The fact that Pollack is a true Renaissance Man lets him savage the worlds of journalism ("The Albania of My Existence"), non-fiction ("The Coitus Chronicles"), and fiction ("Lake Minnesota Days") equally.

Of particular lowbrow interest, Pollack uses sex the way Dave Barry uses booger jokes.

"We always fuck like wildebeest."

"...Inge, utterly sated, gasped for oxygen in the bed behind him..."

"I kissed Brenda, and Brenda kissed everyone else,
and we all fell into a naked heap on the floor, covered in chocolate."

"Yesssss!" she moaned. "Ohhh, baby, yesss."

"She slinks toward me, drapes onto my stern, muscular neck."

- The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature: The Naughty Bits (2005)

Of course, those excerpts are meant to drive up my Internet traffic. In this world, you are either moving toward Pollack, or retreating into the darkness.