Format: Kindle EditionChange
Price:$0.99
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
on March 3, 2016
**SPOILERS**
Is it cringeworthy in places? Sure. And funny? In the telling, yes. In the living, obviously not. But you’ve got to get a kick out of the family’s trip out to California, micro-celebrity Joads, Pollack soon meeting real celebrities who he impresses as being a rube who’s dangerously close to referring to swimming pools as cement ponds as he proceeds to Barton Fink his way through one deal disaster and uncomfortable party after another.
It must have stung mightily when the celebrity he’d been enjoying as a McSweeney’s lit quarterly golden child and McSweeneys.net Internet star (and a sort of poster boy for alt writers) was eclipsed by the star power of those he was rubbing shoulders with. He is shocked, shocked I say! when people don’t get back to him or respond to his IM’s, etc. This is a part of the life the average writer lives. But the very non-average Neal Pollack -- included on the new century’s 20 Great Writers Under Forty articles and the like -- wasn’t accustomed to being treated as though he was less than zero.
Are we supposed to judge him -- I mean beyond the judgements in our reviews of this brief Amazon gut spiller? After all it is “all about him.” (That’s also true of much of Pollack’s best work, from his not so humble beginnings to now.) Many judgements are already built into the story, including his agent asking him “What the hell is wrong with you?!” But no, adding more would just be piling on. And the reader may find it difficult to feel sorry for him as he makes many thousands of dollars on options, etc., though he never closes “the big deal.”
The quick answer to what was wrong, from the view of this innocent bystander to Pollack’s Tinseltown train wreck: ego. One might get the impression from my review that he forgot the accepted wisdom that a writer is at the lowest rung on the ladder you need to climb to get to The Stars. That would be wrong. He didn’t forget and likely just wanted to turn that cliché on its head, Lena Dunham style. In the final analysis he may have been ready to gamble his future on such a rare phenomenon, but when Hollywood took the measure of this funny, though unlucky, man its answer was “We'll pass.”
Is it cringeworthy in places? Sure. And funny? In the telling, yes. In the living, obviously not. But you’ve got to get a kick out of the family’s trip out to California, micro-celebrity Joads, Pollack soon meeting real celebrities who he impresses as being a rube who’s dangerously close to referring to swimming pools as cement ponds as he proceeds to Barton Fink his way through one deal disaster and uncomfortable party after another.
It must have stung mightily when the celebrity he’d been enjoying as a McSweeney’s lit quarterly golden child and McSweeneys.net Internet star (and a sort of poster boy for alt writers) was eclipsed by the star power of those he was rubbing shoulders with. He is shocked, shocked I say! when people don’t get back to him or respond to his IM’s, etc. This is a part of the life the average writer lives. But the very non-average Neal Pollack -- included on the new century’s 20 Great Writers Under Forty articles and the like -- wasn’t accustomed to being treated as though he was less than zero.
Are we supposed to judge him -- I mean beyond the judgements in our reviews of this brief Amazon gut spiller? After all it is “all about him.” (That’s also true of much of Pollack’s best work, from his not so humble beginnings to now.) Many judgements are already built into the story, including his agent asking him “What the hell is wrong with you?!” But no, adding more would just be piling on. And the reader may find it difficult to feel sorry for him as he makes many thousands of dollars on options, etc., though he never closes “the big deal.”
The quick answer to what was wrong, from the view of this innocent bystander to Pollack’s Tinseltown train wreck: ego. One might get the impression from my review that he forgot the accepted wisdom that a writer is at the lowest rung on the ladder you need to climb to get to The Stars. That would be wrong. He didn’t forget and likely just wanted to turn that cliché on its head, Lena Dunham style. In the final analysis he may have been ready to gamble his future on such a rare phenomenon, but when Hollywood took the measure of this funny, though unlucky, man its answer was “We'll pass.”
on June 8, 2016
sad
a
view without a window
would like to see more by this author
a happy ending would be nice
glad his wife staed wth him
a
view without a window
would like to see more by this author
a happy ending would be nice
glad his wife staed wth him
