Neal Pollack's Official Internet Home

Neal Pollack is one of America's most hyped living American writers. There's no way around it. If you're swimming through the filthy wave of "arts & letters"-style hype that trails McSweeney's like an oil slick, you've certainly come across Mr. Pollack's naked presence.

Naked, because Pollack is inexplicably well-known for posing without clothes, rendered decent by a single tactically-placed cat. This photo graces his website, and serves as a jarring introduction to the stacks of text that stuff the interior of this singularly windy but admirably well-focused site. The text talks about Pollack's book, his biography, and the ongoing, much talked-about McSweeney's project.

But the most notable aspect of the site is a bulging collection of essays about the author. The writers are largely unknown to me (a strong, throbbing indicator of my own cultural isolation, no doubt) except for the strapping and formidable Zadie Smith. But they all praise the author, and fan the flames of his remarkably well-presented public posture of brilliant author posing as humorous, downtrodden schlemiel posing as brilliant author.

Like Mr. Pollack's book, and the McSweeney's web presence as a whole, the essays are amusing, at first. They're clearly well written, they use words like "bratwurst" and "Plimpton" and "subjunctive" and they address coherent themes. They go on and on, which should be a good thing.

But it's not a good thing. It's a terrible thing. Because the essays get more and more smart and clever, and more and more wry and witty, until you hate the website, you hate everything connected with McSweeney's and you hate yourself. And you want to drink ipecac, and read only the works of Robert Penn Warren, who was a straight-shooter and a poet of such self-possessed brilliance that he never had to muck around with the World Wide Web in any way whatsoever.

And then you realize you're just jealous.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)