Customer Reviews

Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Never Mind the Pollacks by Neal Pollack is alternately brilliant and trash, and if you are at all into the history of rock music, Thompsonian mania, sex, drugs, puking on shoes, f**king the establishment, riding the snake to the lake, and flipping birds or wearing sunglasses in every photograph ever taken of you, definitely read this book.

At the very least it's good for some seriously hard laughs, and even when he fails at what he's doing, it's like seeing your favorite band play a bad show--you still get the gist of what he was going for, and as is true with rock-and-roll in general, you just can't be on all the time.

Now, i'm going to go puke up 8 martinis and pass out cold.

Note: I am no relation to Mr Pollack. My surname has two O's.

Rock and roll is the people's music and in Never Mind The Pollacks, A Rock And Roll Novel by Neal Pollack, Neal Pollack, the critic, bounces off the people who make the music to always hilarious and often pointed effect.

When he stops bouncing he usually finds himself down and out, yet luckily beneath the soft white underbelly of the holy cow of rock and roll, its teats thankfully there to squirt its rejuvenating fluids into Pollack's grateful face. That and he's watched over by the magic bluesman, Clambone, as enigmatic yet down to earth as the blues itself.

Pollack often seems oblivious to his journey through rock, while we are fortunate enough to enjoy the likes of Elvis, Iggy, Dylan, The Stones, et al as they pass through the zonked out haze that is Pollack's world. But hey, that world is rock and roll.

Don't think Pollack is some insignificant Forest Gump-like character batted around existence like one of Gump's ping-pong balls: Pollack is important enough that another rock critic wants to write his biography. And though it seems the lame and effete Paul St. Pierre may never truly grasp Pollack's importance or meaning to the world they both inhabit, a final face off with his subject gives him a double shot of the rock and roll life that Pollack has lived and St. Pierre has only written about from a distance.

But screw the analyses. If you like to rock and like to laugh you can do both of these things until it hurts. Plus there's an apocalypse at the end. And it's not just some damn high school blowing up or something.

So, I rate Never Mind The Pollacks #1. With a bullet.

Never Mind the Pollacks is just like every other sanctimonious book that tells the history of rock 'n' roll and why we're supposed to care, but with one significant difference: this one is actually entertaining. I read it straight through in the course of one very empty day, which, in retrospect, probably was not a great idea, as this is a thing to be savored, but I couldn't help myself. I tried, Lord how I tried, but I simply could not help myself. So, if you're the least bit interested in the history of rock, or just enjoy being amused, or like seeing various icons skewered with needle-sharp wit, or merely enjoy buying things, this is the book for you!

Few writers sizzle my steak like Big Dave Eggers, and Neal Pollack's NEVER MIND THE PUPPETS, a life-size bio about Ecko Unltd. and his Bunnymen--sex-starved "garmentos" living, loving, walking, talking, and eating kasha knishes in midtown Manhattan--outdoes even the Great One. Pollack's premise is deceptively simple and dangerously polemical: does the good boy from Winnetka go with his feelings and Rock On to the big town of Sault Ste. Marie, or does he stay home, put in his four sorry years at Winnetka State, and then inherit his father's money-lending operation? It may seem like a touching homage to the work of Sherwood Anderson, but in fact what we have here is the most searing examination of the values and desires articulated by that mantra "Sex, Drugs & A Rock Polishing Machine for your Tenth Birthday." Plus some of that Sherwood Anderson stuff, but more in the vein of "The Torrents of Spring" than "Winesburg, OH." At any rate, Pollack is definitely a man with a future announcing professional roller derby matches. The sport's louche chic and direct appeal to Bachman-Turner Overdrive fans probably will have the cultural critics standing and cheering sometime in the next two-three weeks. Hope Pollack hears the call.

Neal Pollack proves with this novel that he's at his best when working in the short form. The "Catching Up with Neal Pollack" and discussion questions are the funniest parts of the paperback edition. Pollack fails to mine his rich comic premise of its full potential. He doesn't explore the opportunities for genuinely inspired humor in any of the scenes he depicts, choosing instead to fall back on the same tired formula: Pollack parties with rock stars, says obnoxious but unfunny things, and vomiting ensues. This is just lazy writing, and the author is capable of much better when he's comfortable with the form in which he is operating. That said, I really liked the ending.

Is Neal Pollacks' "Never Mind the Pollacks" "weak"? Is it chock full of "potty humor"? Is it "dumb" or "self-indulgent"? Yes it is. But so's rock-n-roll and that's the point. Rock-n-roll isn't about wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow thingies, smoking a pipe and wondering about the Kantian ramifications of a literary piece. It's about sex and drugs and hollering while you're throwing bottles at The Man.

And so it goes that "Never Mind the Pollacks" isn't a Henry James-styled, let's all frolick in the solarium and wear lots of frilly stuff book about the frailty of the human condition. It's the sordid history of rock-n-roll and how one man, one drug addled, unbathed man, helped shape it. From witnessing his father die beneath the wheels of Elvis's truck to joining the Ramones (as Smokey) for their first gig to discovering Kurt Cobian under a bridge, this book takes us through the way the music was shaped (or mangled, as the case may be) and subsequently reviewed.

Also, it's one of the funniest books ever written.

If you're looking for sub-text and symbolism and a candidate for Oprah's book club, go somewhere else. But if you want the only book you can safely take with you to a Scorpions concert -- this is it.

Trust me: "Never Mind the Pollacks" is the loudest book you will ever read.

Prior to this amazing book, Hunter S. Thompson was the undisputed monarch of Gonzo journalism. And Lester Bangs was his counterpart in music criticism.

Their storytelling was channeled through massive quantities of drugs and sex and rock 'n' roll and drugs and drugs (they liked drugs) weaving wild tales of life and adventure. Yep, 'ol HST and Les, I sure-enough hear Neil Pollack knockin' at the door.

To describe this book in a word: outlandish! A brilliant voice tells the (you really want to believe) story-behind-the-story. Even though it's all a farce, I couldn't help loving every word. Every punctuation mark, for that matter. And I don't even like the guy, much less completely agree with his point of view.

Somehow, virtually every major rock artist and event get chronicled with Pollack dead-center on the action. Elvis gave him his non-Jewish name at his bar mitzva. He and Dylan hung tight in the early days. Along the way Pollack also influences The Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, Springsteen, and Kurt Cobain -- and a the prime component at Monteray Pop, Woodstock, and the Fillmore -- amongst lots of others.

Be forewarned. Proceed very carefully here. You might make a mistake and assume this is a casual read because the story simply flys along at the speed of -- well pure crystal meth, I suppose. Nuh-uh! No sir-re-bob-a-roo! This here book's the making of a monumnental new member of Gonzo journalism at its damnable best.

Roll over Lester Bangs and tell Hunter S. Thompson the news.

I'm a big fan of Neal Pollack's. His "Anthology of American Literature" remains one of the funniest things that I've ever read. However, "Never Mind The Pollacks" is neither funny nor entertaining. It's a wonderful idea with a really funny title but it falls short on many levels.

The book is the same joke throughout, with a fake Neal Pollack (nee Norbert Pollackovitz) as the greatest rock critic to walk the face of the earth. The book details his adventures with every great band/singer of the last 40 years (the book ends with the fake Pollack's death in 1994) before their mainstream discovery, or rather, before their ascension to mainstream consciousness as a result of contact with Neal Pollack. Pollack subsequently alienates all of his music and writer friends by sleeping with the narrator's wives, doing massive amounts of drugs and waking up from these drug-induced blackouts caked in his own filth and vomit. Time and time again, Pollack wakes up full of vomit, frequently naked, to the vision of his musical messiah, Clambone Jefferson, who nods him in the direction of his next musical discovery.

This is repetitive material from a writer who is capable of so much more.

What Neal has written is a scathing, highly entertaining critique of rock journalism. His characters form a spectrum from the dirtiest, most indie to the vaulted pseudo intellectual set, and he wastes no time flaying them all on the razor's edge of rock.

As a reader who isn't a real rock afficionado, the jokes were broad enough and about people I'd heard of or who had been introduced through the "history" enough to be laughed at - the book moves fast, and some punchlines didn't hit until a couple pages afterward, when I found myself laughing out loud.

Tragedy + time equals comedy, and by the time the story rollercoasters from the fifties to the nineties, it becomes clear where rock comes from, and why critics will never touch the true source.

I definitely think Never Mind the Pollacks is a growth over Neal's other work - he's stepping outside the mimic-satire of Anthology of American Literature and coming at the material edgewise, broadening the message. This book proves Neal has more to say, and I'm looking forward to whatever else is to come, be it rock music or indie lit.

In his writing, Pollack plays with genre cliches just like Mel Brooks did. Instead of seeing Never Mind The Pollacks as the end-point of literature, as some critics seem to insist, look at it as the early work of one of our great satirists. Rock-n-roll is a little overplayed as a topic, but this book is still hilarious. I look forward to seeing Pollack's work develop as he takes on weightier material.