About book Never Mind The Pollacks: A Rock And Roll Novel (2004)
As I've been getting more and more into not just reading books, but also reading about books (on fine blogs like Bookslut and 50 Books), I've noticed that there are a few names that are often used as examples of both what is right and what is wrong with writers today - "you either love 'em or hate 'em" kind of authors. Neil Pollack's name seemed to come up more than most, so when I saw Never Mind at a used book sale for $4, I picked it up. After reading it I can see how it would be hard to have something other than complete love or all-out hate for its author.Never Mind, The Gump-like story of a pompous, know-it-all rock critic (is there any other kind?) weaving his through most of Rock and Roll's seminal moments, is a book that is completely off-the-wall, only understandable to those who grew up reading Rolling Stone (back when it was still cool to read RS), sometimes extremely gross, and often times nonsensical. It's also hilarious. Laugh-out-loud-page-after-page hilarious. Pollack's knowledge of the subject matter and his boldness in insulting his target audience - music snobs (of which he's obviously one) - and most importantly the fact that the book is hilarious (did I mention that already?) puts him firmly in my "what's right with writers today" column.
Neal Pollack skewers fifty years of rock-and-roll idol worship in this mean-spirited, yet laugh-out-loud funny, piss-take on rock criticism. From its cough-syrup swilling anti-protagonist, the out-Lester Bangs-ing critic Neal Pollack (yeah, you read that right) to its swipes at everybody from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to Iggy Pop to Johnny Rotten to Kurt Cobain, Never Mind the Pollacks is a wild, decadent, and fun ride through rock-and-roll excess. Sure, it’s nothing Hunter Thompson didn’t already do years earlier, but it’s still fun.
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—Ed Wagemann
Never Mind the Pollacks offers a pretentious academic/critic/biographer's take on the legendary (and entirely fictional) life of the "greatest rock critic who ever lived and ever will," Mr. Neal Pollack. Though preternaturally brilliant, the syrup-sqigging Pollack's also "a pretentious bloated nightmare of a man" who seems to get routinely screwed (both literally and metaphorically) by the people he turns into legends. The author Neal Pollack enmeshes his fictional alter-ego into the most seminal moments in rock-n-roll history. There he is taking Elvis to Sun Records for to meet Sam Phillips. There he is walking in on Jerry Lee Lewis banging his mom. There he is the night Dylan meets Baez. There he is with them all before they became ROCK GODS: The Stones, Iggy Pop, the Boss (who gets a brilliant skewering), Kurt, the Minutemen, Lou Reed and co. The tale swaggers from absurdity to absurdity, poking holes in these legends and in the process by which critics turn these chemically-altered hedonistic guitar-bangers into legends. It's frequently brilliant, occasionally awful, always obnoxious satire for record fiends, and it's a shitload of fun.
—Chris
