Neal Pollack (born March 1, 1970) is an American

satirist This is an incomplete list of writers, cartoonists and others known for involvement in satire – humorous social criticism. They are grouped by era and listed by year of birth. Included is a list of modern satires. Under Contemporary, 1930-196 ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

writer, and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

. He lives in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

. Pollack has written 10 books: ''The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature'', ''Never Mind the Pollacks'', ''Beneath the Axis of Evil'', ''Alternadad,'' ''Stretch,'' ''Jewball'', ''Downward-Facing Death'', ''Open Your Heart,'' ''Repeat,'' and ''Keep Mars Weird''. He is also a three-time ''

Jeopardy! ''Jeopardy!'' is an American game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given gene ...

'' champion.

Career

After graduating from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Medill School of Journalism The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University that offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It frequently ranks as the top school of journalism in the Unite ...

, Pollack worked as a staff reporter for the '' Chicago Reader'' from 1993 to 2000, covering

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

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 Del Close (March 9, 1934 – March 4, 1999) was an American actor, writer, and teacher who coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. In addition to an acting career in television and film, he was ...

) and the Free Associates. After

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

's magazine ''

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. Initially publishing the literary journal'' Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', the company has moved to ...

'' began publishing his work, Pollack began appearing in shows with Eggers,

John Hodgman John Kellogg Hodgman (born June 3, 1971) 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 ...

Sarah Vowell Sarah Jane Vowell (born December 27, 1969) is an American author, journalist, essayist, social commentator and voice actress. She has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. She was a contributing editor for the radio pro ...

Zadie Smith Zadie Smith FRSL (born Sadie; 25 October 1975) is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, ''White Teeth'' (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She has been a tenured professor ...

, David Byrne,

Arthur Bradford Arthur Houston Bradford (born November 19, 1969) is an American writer and filmmaker. He has published two books of short stories, ''Dogwalker'' (2001) and ''Turtleface and Beyond'' (2015), and a children's book, ''Benny's Brigade'' (2012). He h ...

, James Flint,

They Might Be Giants They Might Be Giants (often abbreviated as TMBG) is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as a duo, often accompanied by a ...

, M. Doughty, and many others before parting ways with ''McSweeney's'' in 2003. Pollack wrote a political satire column for '' Vanity Fair'', and the "Bad Sex With Neal Pollack" column for Nerve.com. His freelance journalism has appeared in ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Esquire'', ''Men's Journal'', ''GQ'', Slate, Salon, and many other publications. One of his Slate.com articles was featured in the Best American Sportswriting collection of 2006. His satirical online takedow

of James Frey was named one of the "Top 26 Cultural Moments of the Decade" by Slate cultural critic Troy Patterson. In 2007, Pollack started Offsprung.com, a humor magazine and web community for parents. He writes features about technology for the American and British editions of ''Wired'' as well as ''Popular Mechanics'', and contributes frequent car reviews and auto-culture features to the Autos page of Yahoo.com. He also writes features about marijuana culture for The Cannabist, published by ''The Denver Post'', and regularly writes articles about yoga. In June 2010, Pollack completed a 200-hour yoga teacher's certification course at Richard Freeman's Yoga Workshop in Boulder, Colorado, and he teaches yoga at conferences and studios around the country. In September 2013, Pollack appeared on the quiz show ''

,'' winning more than $62,000 in his four-game run.

Books and other media

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

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'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

''. HarperCollins later published an expanded edition. 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's '' Anthology of American Folk 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

. ''Beneath the Axis of Evil'', a parody of post-

9-11 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

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. ''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

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

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', earned Pollack a cover profile in ''

Poets & Writers Poets & Writers, Inc. is one of the largest nonprofit literary organizations in the United States serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The organization publishes a bi-monthly magazine called ''Poets & Writers Magazine'', ...

'', and led to a filmed feature about Pollack's family on '' Nightline''. Critics were sharply divided, calling it everything from "the most offbeat parenting memoir ever written" to "indescribably dull." ''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. Pollack then made a surprising pivot to self-publishing, releasing his novel ''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'' said of ''Jewball'', "Pollack's book reflects the acumen of an accomplished storyteller." Thomas & Mercer released a new edition of ''Jewball ''in March 2012, and it quickly climbed the Amazon bestseller list. In September 2012, Amazon's Thomas & Mercer mystery and thriller imprint published Pollack's novel, ''Downward-Facing Death'' as part of its new Kindle Serials program. This "yoga mystery" features a former LAPD detective-turned yoga teacher named Matt Bolster, who solves crimes on the side to pay the rent. ''Downward-Facing Death'' was published as a full book in January 2013. Amazon published a second serialized Matt Bolster mystery, ''Open Your Heart'', in the summer of 2013. Pollack's novel, ''Repeat,'' a romantic comedy with a time-travel element, was published by Amazon's Lake Union Press in March 2015. 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. He 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. They played their last show in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. Three weeks later, Telegraph Records went bankrupt. In 2013, Chicken Ranch Records, an independent punk label, re-released the album, including a new "bonus track" called "Beer and Weed," as a digital album and limited-edition vinyl.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

* * ''Stretch'' (2010)

Fiction

* ''The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature'' (2002) * ''Beneath the Axis of Evil, One Man's Journey Into the Horrors of War'' (2003) * ''Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel'' (2003) * ''Jewball'' (2011) * ''Downward-Facing Death'' (2013) * ''Open Your Heart'' (2013) * ''Repeat'' (2015) * ''Keep Mars Weird'' (2015) * ''Pothead: My Life as a Marijuana Addict in the Age of Legal Weed'' (2020)

References

External links

Nealpollack.com
- Official Site
Interview with Pollack in "The Onion" about the financial ups and downs of a writer's life.Profile of Pollack and ''Jewball'' in ''The Jewish Daily Forward''.Interview on Yoga Dork
with ''

Flak Magazine ''Flak Magazine'' was an early American online magazine, founded in 1998 by James Norton, Benjamin Fowler, Justin Knoll, Nicholas Coleman and others, mostly alumni and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The chief editor was James Nor ...

''
Interview with The ComingPollack's one and only appearance on ''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollack, Neal 1970 births Living people 21st-century American novelists American satirists American humorists American male novelists American crime fiction writers 21st-century American memoirists Writers from Chicago Writers from California McSweeney's Medill School of Journalism alumni Chicago Reader people Jeopardy! contestants Bloodshot Records artists 21st-century American male writers Novelists from Illinois American male non-fiction writers