literature
Suggestion For Essay
Hi Neal,
Thanks for the recent posts on your blog and the great Grammy piece in
Salon.
Someone needs to do a long essay questioning where American literature
is going and I think that you are the one to do it.
Tom Wolfe in 1989 in Harper's published something called "In Search of
the Billion-Footed Beast" (that might not be an accurate title) that
suggested that young writers need to move away from what they learned at the Iowa writers' workshop or at Stanford and return to a naturalism, using Zola as a model.
You raised a good question a few days ago: Where is American lit going, post 9/11? You are right in that Irony and McSweeney's are not the only answers.
I haven't looked a the Wolfe essay in a long time and I don't think that it is available on the web unless Harper's has it, but you are the one to write an update to it. We deserve more than Alexander Payne showing us Bill Murray mugging for the camera or Dave Eggers.
Please think about it.
Thanks,
Les
Ada Or Craphead
Neal--
Good for you for defending the McSweeney's crew. It's funny that Ada Calhoun rips apart McSwy solipsism when it's her own that is so suspect: by confusing the legacy of McSwy with her own lame NY smartsex-in-the-city love life. What I wish she had written was this....the thing for so many of us who loved McSweeney's that is so sour now is that Eggers and Crew have produced one thing--and that's A Heartbreaking Work--of any sort of actual literary merit (I love the NP Anthology, but that is a work of comedy; great comedy). For so many of us who went to the readings and the bars and did the whole thing....what feels so empty now is that those writers have produced NOTHING of lasting merit...and God, how foolish I feel that I was going nuts for McSwys when a real writer like Philip Roth was publishing American Pastoral or Ford was writing Independence Day...looking back at the journals and the writing, I realize the problem was that McSweeney's was just a really great humor magazine that became artistic, and those stories are such a waste, not a page as rich as some of the great writing that came out at the time...I think that's the reason for Calhoun's anger...not that some hipster didn't go down on her, but rather, with artists, it's nice to feel like you've invested your time and are at least by association part of something that matters, something that people will care about, and the legacy of McSweeneys is sadly not that, and a lot of us just feel gypped....which is why I applaud your new direction....
Joey
Ada
I think that whole essay may have been written around
that clever ending. I enjoyed reading it in a "look at that silly
girl" way, but it didn't make me respect the author. Especially that
whole "recently I was asked to write a sestina..." part.
Your commentary is great.
Lindsay
Foer Review
In his new book, Foer wrote,
"Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted."
And apparently he did teach himself this. Thus, I don't need to tell you anything about the sloppy prose disguised as the thoughts of a nine year old genius and the fact that Foer has never actually spoken to a nine year old, genius or otherwise, in his entire life. The new book is just rich boy wank disguised at literacy, which is a problem all in itself, and not isolated to Foer. Anyhow, buy the book and feel Foer jerk himself off all over you. Some people will like that, I guess.
ben peek
Foer
Just couldn't help myself. Read the excerpt from the novel and granted I have not read the book. But please somebody stop this. Cute and prattling, like his last overly praised book.
Glad to see Foer went right for the comic jugular with the talking
anus/fart/French jokes. Slays 'em every time. And then the coup de grace-- the old kick in the balls ('privates' in the boy genius lexicon) bit.Rib splitting stuff.
This will be hailed as a comic masterpiece, startling, original, inventive,tour de force and all that good stuff. And it will sell. Crumbling the ramparts of literature so that we may have a bonafide wunderkind spillingwords in our midst.
Elwood Reid
Glass-Schell - Thurs AM - 020305
Hi NP -
After slogging though that excerpt from the Foer, all I could think of was the lab tech it must have taken to implant a Glass Family sperm (freezer burned, too) into this kid's Mom. Fucking intolerable little prick, and even more offensive if he's narrating a 9/11 story. JFC!
I must now be thankful for missing Everything Is Illuminated. What troubles me is that there is such an audience for this archness. It's worse than the Reagan-era hotshots - he's not doing drugs, he's sucking blood (if that tambourine doesn't come from a vein of Gunter Grass, then I'm an idiot).
Thanks for the book project you're running on the blog. It's a fine corrective.
I also hope you get generous enrollment for the Satire class - I'd love to do myself, but even with the discount I can get from Salon, it's too expensive. Maybe next year.
Rock on -
Greg
Leonard Gardner
I fascinating fact about Leonard Gardner was that Fat City was his only novel. Makes his literary contribution that much more poignant and impressive. Great recommendation, Mr. Pollack.
Jim Schmaltz, Los Angeles
Real Neal And Pretend Neal
from: Edward Champion
Dear Mr. Pollack:
I have read David Kamp's New York Times review of your book, and I write to
inform you that Mr. Kamp has shown me the True Gospel. He has convinced me
not to buy your book. Beyond your problems of limning the meaning of
"unrelentingly hilarious" to a hoary dude who writes for Vanity Fair is the
troubling dichotomy of Real Neal and Pretend Neal.
This is a new concept to me. I can find nothing on your website that
states or explains this distinction. Will there be an annotated paperback
version of the book to spell this out? Because, really, I'd like nothing
more than to read some facile book naked on the chaise longue while
cracking peanut shells on my chest. Before this review, Mr. Pollack, I had
hoped that your book would be the one. But now that I've read Kamp's
review, dammit, I realize that trying to make sense of the Real
Neal/Pretend Neal thing is going to be more challenging than understanding
the Good Kirk/Bad Kirk plot of "The Enemy Within."
I can't convince myself to buy your book, Mr. Pollack. Particularly when
there are, apparently, multiple versions of "Pretend Neal" running
around. I'm particularly troubled by the fact that you're described by Mr.
Kamp as "yet another doughy, 35-ish white man with a goatee and thinning
hair." How can any self-respecting reader come to terms with your book's
comedic merits when they're faced with this description? And there are
additional side effects here, Pollack. Don't try to shirk away from this,
Pollack. "Real Neal" knows what's going on here, if you catch my
drift. Because Mr. Kamp tells me that "Real Neal knows he's just going
through the motions." Now thanks to Mr. Kamp's review, when I prepare my
chocolate chip cookies on Tuesday morning for the Elks Lodge meeting, I'm
going to see your face in every cookie.
I demand a cogent explanation. In fact, the entire world REQUIRES an
explanation. I'm talking page numbers, specific passages, and a detailed
list of the number of Pretend Neals that we readers have to keep track of.
Goddam you, Pollack. And God Bless the Informed Wisdom of David Kamp!
Troubled,
Edward Champion
