Customer Reviews

Alternadad

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Although I preferred the author's prior "Neal Pollack" persona, I found Alternadad to be an enjoyable read. At its best, Pollack's writing here reminds me vaguely of Nick Hornby's fiction about men-children assuming new responsibilities (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and David Sedaris's essays, which often portray intensely human moments against the backdrop of dysfunctional family relationships. You can get a sense of what Pollack's new voice is like if you visit his eponymous nealpollack blog.

The memoir covers Pollack's journey from privileged teen in the high upper middle class suburbs of Phoenix to mid-30s college graduate with wife and child. Along the way, he establishes that he and his wife pursue a nonconformist lifestyle, refusing to work for anyone but themselves. He is a freelance writer, and she is an artist. He also writes candidly about his relationship with pot. If this book had been published in the early 1990s, I'm sure Pollack and his wife would have been labeled Gen X slackers. (The vogue term, apparently, is hipsters.)

The choice of a nonconformist lifestyle has its costs, including downward mobility. Much of Alternadad describes the trials, tribulations, and tensions the Pollacks endure shortly before and after their son is born. It's clear that they want to be good parents to their son. However, lack of means forces them to confront hard realities. Healthcare isn't cheap. Daycare isn't cheap. An organic diet isn't cheap. Good housing isn't cheap. Pot isn't cheap. The privileged, secure life of the high upper middle class doesn't grow on trees.

At the same time, having a son also presents new non-monetary obligations and responsibilities that tax the do-what-you-want-when-you-want-to aspect of their lifestyle. Irrespective of dad's desire to cruise the bars or make the music scene, the kid needs care and demands attention. And then there are the behavioral issues in daycare . . . .

Alternadad also exposes the influence of media and information overload on young parents. Pollack's wife seems to jump on the Internet at every turn, looking for answers to everything from pressing health questions (e.g., what do you do when your toddler has spaghetti up his nose) to concerns about diet and schooling. Television--and especially children's television--also figures prominently in the Pollack household. Pollack offers some entertaining observations about the various characters that are all too familiar to parents of recent vintage.

I'm sure many will disagree with parenting decisions that the Pollacks made. And some of those decisions are cringeworthy. However, that's part of what learning to be parents is all about. If you can hold your judgment of those decisions in abeyance, Alternadad is an amusing book about a youngish couple's efforts to raise a kid in our media-saturated consumer society.

Long before he secured actual, competent representation, I briefly served as Neal Pollack's professional literary agent. Therefore, my opinion may be somewhat biased, in the sense that I feel for him the same kind of weary I felt for all of my old bloodsucking clients, the ones who kept bothering me all day with their money troubles while I was trying to drink brandy and play minesweeper (that means you, Bruce Campbell!)

But I will confess that ALTERNADAD was a complete and happy surprise to me--hilarious, as all Neal's work is, but heartfelt and true. This book is fully deblustered of the old "Neal Pollack, Greatest Living Writer" persona of his seminal early work, replaced instead by an even older "Neal Pollack" going back to his days at the "Chicago Reader:" the just-plain-good-writer full of caustic wit and human sympathy.

This is a story that documents a new kind of hipster parental mood in some respects, but it is really a much simpler story about a man who loves his wife and son. Neal's ability to say just that puts paid to any rumor that he was ever merely a 90's era irony-drenched ha ha man, and makes ALTERNADAD the best third-book debut I've ever read.

That is all.

After seeing glowing reviews for this book in Texas Monthly and Men's Health, I bought this book with the credit I got for returning a copy of Kinky Friedman's book I'd been given as a gag gift. I read it aloud to my girlfriend as we drove our way down the Oregon coastal highway, and it made the miles fly by. We laughed along, cooed at the cute pics of Neal's kid, Elijah, and were deeply shaken by the similarities between our lives and the scene Pollack paints as his pre-daddy days.

Yes, the book has been done before - as in Bill Cosby's Fatherhood and Paul Reiser's Babyhood. But Pollack offers his own alternate edge and provides what may ironically be the definition of mainstream fatherhood for our generation.

I truly appreciate how this book holds nothing back and allows to see Neal's family in its most unvarnished state. There are no (obvious) secrets and nothing is off-limits.

My only criticism of the book is that it seems to run out of steam about 3/4 of the way through the book. And because of the nature of the fact that Elijah and his parents are still growing and learning, there's no conclusion. Nonetheless, I was still left with a need for more closure as I turned the last page of the book. Perhaps that's why I still visit the blog every once in a while.

As a resident of the neighborhood in Austin where some of the "action" in the book took place, I'd say Pollack got the details right. But the overall tone of the book is a bit narcissistic and juvenile. Hard to be a good father when you refuse to grow up yourself.

Alternadad is a funny, at times touching, memoir of marriage and parenting. Though Pollack is no Sedaris in the humor department (at no point in reading Alternadad did my sides split), credit where it's due: he does have an eye for quirky details, connections, and language. Above all, Pollack emerges from the pages of this memoir as an eminently likeable person, and -- together with his wife -- a seemingly very decent parent: the kind of guy I'd like to hang out with. Having just finished this slightly overlong memoir, I am left only to wonder what's so "Alterna" about this particular dad. Pollack seems pretty much like the next guy, trying to earn a living, provide for his family, instill proper values in his child, etc. (If that's alternative, I'd be curious to know what Pollack considers middle of the road.) In the end, I enjoyed setting a spell with the Pollack family.

Gen-X slacker encounters fatherhood and finds it to his liking. Neal Pollack is determined to be a "cool" and "alternative" Dad, whatever that means. (Maybe it means smoking dope at age 35 after you've put the kid to bed, dude!)

Whatever.

This is an entertaining read regarding the trials and challenges of bringing up baby and growing older (but, as Jimmy Buffet said) not up.

Before I had kids, I had two theories of childrearing. Now, I have two kids and .... no theories. Author Pollack has one kid and a funny book that may touch you with his earnestness in being a good dad and exploring the contours of fatherhood in the 21st century.

Unlike apparently many reviewers here, I am not familiar with Neil Pollack's previous books and other published articles in magazines and webzines. But when I saw this book at my local library, I simply couldn't resist picking this up.

In "Alternadad" (290 pages), author Neil Pollack basically brings a memoir of his life so far, and the book can be divided in two parts, the early part, living in Chicago and eventually meeting his wife, and then the next part, involving moving to/living in Philadelphia and Austin and, of course, becoming a dad at age 33. I have to wonder what the book's title "Alternadad" is really all about. The author likes alternative music, but so what? Many people do too (reason I was tempted by the book's title in the first place). Yet, there is really nothing much "alternative" about how they are raising their son: the baby watches Sesame Street and eats cereal like millions of kids; the author frequents Target and other places that millions of Americans go to, and dotes on his young son, pretty much luke most parents actually. Or is it perhaps due to taking his young son to the Austin City Limits music festival? "I looked at the roster. Franz Ferdinand! the Killers! The Soundtrack of Our Lives! Modest Mouse! I imagined myself saying to my son, 'Elijah, we took you to see Moudest Mouse before you were even two'. Not Mickey Mouse, Modest Mouse! I was going to be the coolest dad ever!" Except that when the festival rolled around, he realizes that it's way too hot to enjoy it and abandons the idea after the first day. Or wondering what age it will be appropriate to watching his favorite movie, "Airplace", with his son. Etc.

In all, the book certainly couldn't live up to the intruiging title of the book. In fact, I'd venture to say that this is pretty much how millions and millions of moms and dads are raising their sons and daughters. If this is "alternative" in the author's view, I cannot even begin to wonder what "middle of the road" would be like.

Neal Pollack, for all his braggadoccio (i.e. telling the reader how cool/hip/alternative he is because of how many women he's slept with/how much marijuana he smokes), is nothing more than the average, run-of-the mill, immature white male thirty-something who thinks his boringly conventional and secure suburban lifestyle is somehow alternative (whatever this ridiculously hackneyed term means anymore). He meets a woman, Regina Allen, whom he feels he can actually commit himself to, gets married, and decides to have a child and the rest of the memoir is basically about Neal telling the reader that these orthodox decisions do not mean he needs to relinquish his commitment to leading an alternative lifestlye. Anyway, I'm not saying that the only way to live 'alternatively' is to dwell in some ecovillage in places like Ithaca/Berkeley/Eugene, or to engage in polyamory, or to have one's children be delivered by a midwife and eschew vaccination/circumcision/diapers, etc. but I am saying that as far as I can discern, there is nothing alternative about Neal Pollack's choice of lifestyle. If anything, reading this book was almost a slap in the face to someone who does try to lead an alternative lifestyle (and does not approve of such heterosexist institutions as marriage or such a human rights violation as circumcision). Get over yourself, Neal.

Neal Pollack's memoir, Alternadad, is a witty, honest, and engaging story of the struggles of parenthood. It had me laughing and remembering our own struggles as my wife and I raised two sons who are now adults. The Pollack's experiences are not much different from any parent in spite of the fact that Pollack prides himself on being counter-culture.

I was with Pollack all the way until the last quarter of the book when I realized I was becoming angry with him and his wife and couldn't wait until I finished the book. He described his son's biting habit in a way that gave not one indication on his or his wife's part about the possibility that they might have something to do with it. They haul their kid off to a rock concert when the temperature is over 100 degrees just to let him hear great rock music never thinking for one moment that rock music might interfere with the development of the neural connections of his young brain. Rock music is great but not for babies. Pollack says that he wants his son to be just like him but he forgets he is only a baby and not a thirty-five year old man who is having his own problems growing up, and he never for once thinks that the kid might not want to be like him. Could it also be that the child's biting problem is a reaction to the pressure to be just like dad?

I applaud Pollack's honesty in this memoir and his great writing ability, but the story doesn't show any kind of personal growth on his or his wife's part. The book jacket says that this book, "...might just be the parenting bible for a new generation of mothers and fathers." Let's hope not.

Alternadad is a fun, thoughtful memoir about raising a young child one's own way, but you don't need to be a self-described hipster parent or go to South by Southwest to appreciate what it's like to struggle through early parenting decisions, adjust to meaningful changes in your life when a child arrives, or measure the impact of your financial situation on your home and your child.

Some of the reviews I've seen of this book seem to assume that because Neal Pollack's previous work was irony-drenched, there's a powerful undercurrent here as well. Don't be fooled - the irony and sarcasm is out in the open, and there's not enough of it to be off-putting to the casual (non-demographically-"appropriate") reader.

The narrative of the book isn't terribly consistent, and the final jump into the commentary about Pollack's infamous Salon article comes out of nowhere, but this didn't impact the enjoyment of the book - I just wanted more blanks to be filled.

Finally, as a new parent with a child about two years younger than Neal's son Elijah, this was one of only two books (the other being The Poo Bomb, which is a very funny, very different book) I've read that I actually identified with - that didn't feel like it was trying to impart Life Lessons or ring false with reality.