Neal Pollack: Interview
By Eric Wittmershaus
Illustration by Jeffrey Avila

Neal Pollack wears a lot of hats. So it was little surprise when the author of "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature" leapt at the chance to play Socrates during his "author's brown bag lunch" in Berkeley's People's Park last October.

When a passing Street Spirit newspaper vendor sought refuge from the rain in the grove of trees that played host to the intimate gathering, Pollack told the man the assembled readers were "my students."

Coming from a former improv comedian who has done author appearances in delicatessens and bathrooms, nothing's unexpected.

Pollack's goals are simple — to entertain and to have a good time doing it.

"I think this is a reaction to stuffy literary culture," he said at the lunch, which more resembled a discussion of literature than a stop on a promotional book tour.

"People are amazed that I would do these things at a literary event," he said, explaining the varying degrees of acceptance and rejection he's met.

When one of his "students" asked why some might disagree with his tactics, which have included a live band, a clown attack and impersonations of other authors, Pollack lapsed back into Socrates mode.

"They're afraid of me and my ideas," he said.

His self-appointed role of author appearance performance artist perfectly fits the concept of his breezy first book. "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature" is a savvy, quick-reading parody of journalists who would be authors. Rolling Stone called the collection of essays "one of the greatest satires of authorial vanity to come along since the actual career of Norman Mailer," and rightfully so.

Plenty of folks seem to love the essays, with their titles like "The Albania of My Existence" and "Why Am I So Handsome?" as well as the book's timeline of Pollack's alter-ego existence. Negative reviews of the book have been in short supply and Pollack's publisher has sold all of the book's 10,000-copy first run, plus 2,000 second editions. Pollack has recently inked a deal with HarperCollins to publish the paperback edition in January, 2002, he said in a follow-up e-mail interview. Quite a feat for a first-time author who, until recently, worked a day job writing for the weekly Chicago Reader.

A good deal of Pollack's success has had to do with his publisher. "The Neal Pollack Anthology" was the first book to be published by McSweeney's Books, the fledgling publishing house started by Dave Eggers, author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," the beloved-by-literary-hipsters (or nerds, depending on whom you ask) bestseller of last February that's just been released on paperback. Eggers also edits Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, as well as its popular website.

But literary success isn't enough to single-handedly catapult a young author like Eggers to the rank of full-fledged publisher, which is why Pollack and Eggers worked out a somewhat unusual publishing model.

"I receive 100 percent of the profits," Pollack said in an interview that followed the Berkeley brown bag lunch. Once Eggers covers the costs of printing, shipping and marketing, Pollack keeps everything.

While that sounds like a great deal for the author, there was a drawback. Pollack received no advance for the book, and paid for his book tour out of his own pocket, something that put him $10,000 in the hole, according to an article on Inside.com.

But Pollack was really in a position to benefit from the unusual publishing model for one basic reason. Unlike most authors shopping a book, much of "The Neal Pollack Anthology" had already been published on the McSweeney's website by the time its author even considered putting together a book.

"The book was already 80 percent done by the time I decided to turn it into a book," he said. "It was no big deal."

The book tour, though, is another story.

"It would have been nice to have maybe four or five thousand bucks to travel with because that seems to be what it's costing to do a two-month, nationwide book tour," he said.

Nonetheless, the author said he managed to finance his trip with credit cards and checks from freelance writing. To save money, he and his wife, Regina Allen, stayed with friends as they traveled around the country. And the couple did a lot of their own driving from city to city during the Eastern half of the tour.

What's it like to be on a book tour with your wife?

"I've got two words for you, and one of 'em's hyphenated: Non-stop fucking," Pollack said.

"In all of our friends' various beds," Allen added, rolling with it, before saying it's really been "Non-stop naggin'."

But even that seems to be a joke, as the couple works well together as a touring phenom. At the People's Park event, Pollack and Allen both talked to the folks who turned out, and when someone wanted to buy a book, Pollack kept talking while Allen handled the money, rather like a one-woman merchendise booth at a concert.

"We're trying to do a book tour like a rock tour and do book publishing like record producing," Pollack said.

"There's not a real, super-successful independent publishing model," he added. "I think small publishing needs to reinvent itself to suit the needs of the contemporary book buyer and reader. (Small presses) are still caught up in the old way of marketing books."

Along with the rock-style tour come groupies, though the presence of Pollack's wife Regina Allen likely discourages anyone from throwing themselves at Pollack's feet. Nearly 100 people turned out to see Pollack's first San Francisco reading at City Lights booksellers. Many of them heard about the event through McSweeney's website. Throughout the tour, folks have turned out in large numbers to see Pollack read.

What all this means is that the McSweeney's crowd — made up of Eggers, Pollack, "White Teeth" author Zadie Smith, National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jonathan Lethem and other up, coming and already here authors — have the odd distinction of belonging to the first sceneless literary scene, with no real location other than the Internet and maybe Brooklyn, where Eggers and McSweeney's operate.

"There are an astonishing number of things in common between people who show up at the readings," Pollack said. "They all tend to be between 22 and 35, usually white ... And college educated. Not like super-hip ... Literary dorks, you know?

"It's a really nice, generous, good crowd of people. I've met very, very few people through McSweeney's who I thought were uncool or untrustworthy or somehow sneaky or manipulative ... And (they're) not scenesters."

But they're devoted. Pollack's swing through the Bay Area packed both City Lights and The Booksmith, also in San Francisco. The lunch at People's Park drew 10 people despite horrible weather and no promotion, save McSweeney's and Pollack's websites.

In between all this, Pollack found time to have dinner with Clint Marsh and Heather Schlegal, two fans from Berkeley who had originally extended an invitation to the author to accompany them on vacation.

Pollack declined, but he and Regina rolled with the dinner-with-strangers concept, smoking hookahs and drinking kava at a San Francisco restaurant. They even allowed this poor writer to tag along.

But the author's congeniality isn't the only thing setting him apart from his peers. Much like Eggers — whose San Francisco book reading kicked off with lecture from a fireman — Pollack doesn't do a traditional, sit-down-while-I-read-to-you event.

"I don't like the whole relationship between the author and his or her audience," he said. "It's strange.

"There's this whole master-servant thing going on. I'm into breaking some of those walls."

And though Pollack does a pretty good Dave Eggers impression ("Well, I've talked to him on the phone a lot," he said), he likes to do things a bit differently.

"I like performing more than Dave does," he said. "I do a lot of singing and characters."

Pollack said he tries to gear his performances toward the city in which he's reading. For example, at Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's now-famous City Lights, the 30-year-old Pollack read an off-the-wall Beat poem he'd scribbled in Golden Gate Park. He also showed slides of beatnik poets while talking about his role in the scene.

But with all these bookstores so accustomed to the stiff author readings Pollack decries, were they ready for him?

"City Lights last night was just terrific," he said. "Some bookstores have just been OK. Chapter 11 in Atlanta was a nightmare.

"They didn't even acknowledge my presence, basically. I was completely dressed as Mark Twain, white suit, a chalky white wig. Everything was dyed. Eyebrows. I walked in and said, 'Hi, I'm Neal Pollack,' and they said, 'All right, you're over there.'"

At Pollack's stop at The Booksmith (the day after this interview was conducted), he sang with a bluegrass band. Then it was off to Los Angeles and a dramatic reading of his essay "My Lesbian Sister." Former child actor Staci Keenan played the sister in question.

"She's just a college student now," Pollack said. "Not really worried about being an actor anymore, since 'Step by Step' went off the air."

Pollack's life as an author has stayed interesting beyond the end of his book tour, though. After he and Allen bought a house and moved to Philadelphia, the author found time to lead "Minor Literary Celebrities Against Fascism," a protest against the inauguration of President George W. Bush. It's the sort of large-scale, literary geek get-together popularized by Eggers and McSweeney's, but this time with a cause. Now back in Philadelphia, Pollack's working as a freelance journalist and writing a column for the Philadelphia Weekly.

Despite Eggers and Pollack's different writing and speaking styles, it's not difficult to see why many who've never met the two men might confuse them. In fact, Pollack said people still mistake him for his publisher, with many voicing the opinion that Neal Pollack is just one of Eggers' numerous pseudonyms and that Pollack the man is simply traveling around reading someone else's prose.

"There's this guy who writes a book column for the San Diego Union Tribune," Pollack said, launching into his favorite identity-crisis tale. "He thought he was uncovering some incredible secret that Dave was, in fact, me and that I was just a pseudonym.

"He just point-blank said it: 'Neal Pollack does not exist.'"

But it didn't stop there.

"So my grandmother (who lives in San Diego) picks up a paper ... and she calls my mom and says, 'Susan, there's someone here from the newspaper who says that Neal does not exist.'

"So then my mom gets (the columnist) online and immediately dashes off a hilarious letter ... She just cut him off at the legs."

Pollack put both the article and the letter on his website.

"Within a couple of hours, that guy had sent me and my mother a personal apology. But then it got picked up by (Media News), which is something that every journalist in the country reads. Sales on Amazon spiked. Everyone's asked me about it."

Or, to put it another way, "I've got this built-in wall against criticism — my mom."

A somewhat different, shorter version of this article appeared in the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune last November.