Neal Pollack is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 satirist

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

, novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist, short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 writer, and journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

. He lives in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

. Pollack has written six books: The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Never Mind the Pollacks, Beneath the Axis of Evil, Alternadad, Stretch, and Jewball. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America

Writers Guild of America

The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....

 and PEN.

Career

After graduating from Northwestern University's Medill School Of Journalism, Pollack worked as a staff reporter for The Chicago Reader from 1993 to 2000, covering Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 city politics and writing profiles of urban eccentrics. Meanwhile, he performed with various improv comedy troupes around Chicago, including ImprovOlympic (where he studied with Del Close) and the Free Associates. After Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...

's magazine McSweeney's

Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is a literary journal, first published in 1998, edited by Dave Eggers. The first issue featured only works rejected by other magazines, but thereafter the journal began to include pieces written with McSweeney's in mind. McSweeney’s has since published works by...

began publishing his work, Pollack began appearing in shows with Eggers, John Hodgman

John Hodgman

John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in...

, Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell

Sarah Jane Vowell is an American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator. Often referred to as a "social observer," Vowell has written five nonfiction books on American history and culture, and was a contributing editor for the radio program This American Life on Public Radio...

, Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...

, David Byrne

David Byrne (musician)

David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...

, Arthur Bradford

Arthur Bradford

Arthur Houston Bradford is an American short story author and a director. He has had one book of short stories published, Dogwalker . He has won an O. Henry Award and has had his stories published in Esquire, McSweeneys, Zoetrope, Dazed & Confused, Tin House, and BOMB...

, They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are...

, M. Doughty, and many others before parting ways with McSweeney's in 2003.

Pollack wrote a political satire column for Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (magazine)

Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...

, and the "Bad Sex With Neal Pollack" column for Nerve.com. His freelance journalism appears in Wired, Slate.com, Salon.com, Men's Journal, GQ, and many other publications. One of his Slate.com articles was featured in the Best American Sportswriting collection of 2006. His satirical online take down http://www.slate.com/id/2239358/pagenum/3 of James Frey was named one of the "Top 26 Cultural Moments Of The Decade" by Slate cultural critic Troy Patterson.

In 2007, along with Ben Brown and Matthew Tobey, Pollack started Offsprung.com, a humor magazine and web community for parents, where Pollack contributes an advice column. The blog on his website, Alternadad, records Pollack's continuing adventures with his son Elijah; his wife, painter Regina Allen; and his Boston terriers

Terrier

A terrier is a dog of any one of many breeds or landraces of terrier type, which are typically small, wiry, very active and fearless dogs. Terrier breeds vary greatly in size from just a couple of pounds to over 70 pounds and are usually categorized by size or function...

 Hercules and Shaq. He also writes about his most recent passion, yoga. In June 2010, he completed a 200-hour yoga teacher's certification course at Richard Freeman's Yoga Workshop in Boulder, Colorado.

Books and other media

Pollack self-published his most recent book, Jewball, in October 2011. A marked departure from his previous work, Pollack wrote Jewball, a serio-comic noir set in the world of 1930s Jewish basketball players, as a tribute to the days of classic American crime fiction. Forbes Magazine said of Jewball, ‎"Pollack's book reflects the acumen of an accomplished storyteller."

Stretch: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude, a chronicle of Pollack's adventures in American yoga culture, appeared in August 2010 to largely positive reviews. Wrote Ann Pizer in About.com: "Those yogis who are not naturally athletic, were never a member of professional dance troupe, and were not raised in a yurt, in other words, ordinary yogis, have found our spokesmodel." Pollack continues to practice and write about yoga and occasionally teaches yoga classes and workshops around the U.S.

Alternadad, published by Pantheon in January 2007, first exposed Pollack's work to a wider public. Unlike his previous arch satires, Alternadad is a straightforward, if humorous memoir of his early days as a "cool" parent in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

. Upon publication, Alternadad received a flurry of press, largely in the form of trend stories about "hipster parents." It was featured in Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

and The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, earned Pollack a cover profile in Poets & Writers Magazine, and led to a filmed feature about Pollack's family on Nightline. Critics were sharply divided on the book, calling it everything from "the most offbeat parenting memoir ever written" to "indescribably dull." The book was nominated for a 2008 Books For A Better Life award, in the parenting category.

The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature, a collection of short satires of literary pomposity, was originally published by McSweeney's

McSweeney's

McSweeney's is an American publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers.Apart from its book list, McSweeney's is responsible for four regular publications: the quarterly literary journal,...

 in 2000. It won the 2001 Firecracker Award for best independently published fiction and led to Pollack being named a "Hot Writer" by Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

. HarperCollins later published an expanded edition.

Beneath the Axis of Evil, a parody of post-9-11

September 11, 2001 attacks

The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

 war punditry, was published in a limited edition by So New Media in 2002. Never Mind The Pollacks, a satirical novel about dueling rock critics, came out from HarperCollins in 2003.

Pollack is also the editor of Chicago Noir, a collection of original crime stories from Akashic Books. His crime fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and short-story collections.

In 2001, to coincide with the publication of the paperback edition of his Anthology, Pollack recorded a spoken-word album on Bloodshot Records, produced by Jon Langford and featuring Sally Timms and Kelly Hogan. Designed to look like Harry Smith

Harry Everett Smith

Harry Everett Smith was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic...

's Anthology of American Folk Music

Anthology of American Folk Music

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records , comprising eighty-four American folk, blues and country music recordings that were originally issued from 1927 to 1932.Experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith compiled the music...

, the album is a bizarre if entertaining mishmash of styles. HarperCollins put the album out in 2002 as part of a boxed set of Pollack's "collected recordings," including an hour-long disc of Def Poetry Jam parodies and a fake interview with John Hodgman

John Hodgman

John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in...

.

Pollack formed a punk-rock band in 2003 to publicize Never Mind The Pollacks. The original Neal Pollack Invasion included folk-rock musician Jim Roll, veteran touring musicians Neil Cleary and Jon Williams, and Dakota Smith, a young Austin musician who later became the lead guitarist for Peel. They recorded an album of original songs. Pollack wrote the lyrics and Smith and Roll wrote the music. Telegraph Records released the album in the fall of 2003, and the band went on a 20-city tour, including shows at the South By Southwest and CMJ music festivals. They played their last show in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. Three weeks later, Telegraph Records went bankrupt, and the band never reunited.

Fiction

• The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature (2002) ISBN 0060011688
• Beneath the Axis of Evil, One Man's Journey Into the Horrors of War (2003) ISBN 0972763600
• Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel (2003) ISBN 0060527900
• Jewball (2011) ISBN 978146672624

External links

• Nealpollack.com - Official Site
• Profile of Pollack and Jewball in The Jewish Daily Forward.
• Interview on Yoga Dork
• Radio Interview with The Sound of Young America
• Interview with Flak Magazine
  Flak Magazine
  Flak Magazine was a pioneering American online magazine, founded in 1998. The chief editor is James Norton, the managing editor is Joey Rubin. , it reported over 250,000 unique visitors monthly. In 2008, Flak suspended publication....
  
  
• Interview with The Coming
• Interview with 3:AM Magazine
• Interview with Gelf Magazine
• Interview with Identity Theory
• Pollack's one and only appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.