Acclaimed Fiction/Nonfiction Writer Shares Latest Work at Recent Event
Neal Pollack Reads, Visits Students at ACC
by Ademilola Mojiminiyi
Neal Pollack, acclaimed Rolling Stone Magazine “Hot Writer” of 2000, had the audience of the Rio Grande Campus Mainstage Theater on October 16th in stitches after reading from his new book, Alternadad, a memoir on parenthood. He regaled a group of seventy–five or so with tales of diaper changes gone awry and facing the reality of being a little bit older, but perhaps non the wiser.
Alternadad and stories form his blog “Alternadad” at Parents.com elicited gleeful guffaws. This is because Pollack has a knack for taking the sometimes painful and mundane details of growing experiences and making them hilarious through sarcasm and irony. He has turned this same lens onto his practice of yoga — the subject of the book he is currently writing. In an act of bravery, he read from his unfinished non–fiction work, chronicling the sweaty, flatulent, and at times riotous antics of his yoga classes.
Pollack had much to offer the aspiring writer. He read from another work in progress, a noir fiction detective novel, about a Jewish basketball player in the 1930s. This provided the audience with more laughs and insight into the process of bringing a story to completion. On October 15th, he visited a class of Advanced Creative Prose writers to share his thoughts on craft and the writing life. His dedication to making writing his career is tempered with both practicality and passion: his published works about the subjects he loves (parenting, yoga, music, literature, and noir) are subjects that others are passionate about too.
Pollack’s other books, all works of satire, include: Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel, The Neal Pollack Anthology of Literature, and Beneath the Axis of Evil. Pollack, who writes a humor column for The New York Times Magazine, has also written for GQ, Details, and Salon. Reviewers have described his work as “bracingly honest,” “amusingly cranky,” “manic tongue–in–cheek,” and “laugh–out–loud funny.” He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.
