Rating: 
Summary: Best Rock Novel Since "You Shall Smell our Velocipedes"
Review: Few writers sizzle my steak like Big Dave Eggers, and Neal Pollack's NEVER MIND THE PUPPETS, a life-size bio about Ecko Unltd. and his Bunnymen--sex-starved "garmentos" living, loving, walking, talking, and eating kasha knishes in midtown Manhattan--outdoes even the Great One. Pollack's premise is deceptively simple and dangerously polemical: does the good boy from Winnetka go with his feelings and Rock On to the big town of Sault Ste. Marie, or does he stay home, put in his four sorry years at Winnetka State, and then inherit his father's money-lending operation? It may seem like a touching homage to the work of Sherwood Anderson, but in fact what we have here is the most searing examination of the values and desires articulated by that mantra "Sex, Drugs & A Rock Polishing Machine for your Tenth Birthday." Plus some of that Sherwood Anderson stuff, but more in the vein of "The Torrents of Spring" than "Winesburg, OH." At any rate, Pollack is definitely a man with a future announcing professional roller derby matches. The sport's louche chic and direct appeal to Bachman-Turner Overdrive fans probably will have the cultural critics standing and cheering sometime in the next two-three weeks. Hope Pollack hears the call.
Rating: 
Summary: Run Pollack Run!
Review: From the webzine NadaMucho.com, which recently added book reviews...All art is inherently narcissistic, none more than the popular arts that dominate our culture right now. Narcissistic for the artist, sure-they're the ones shouting, "Look at me world, I've got something to say!" But also for the consumers who use art as a mirror to measure against their lives. Neal Pollack sets his sights firmly on self-referential pop art with "Never Mind the Pollacks!", a satirical journey through the history of rock and roll as loosely narrated by Paul St. Pierre, a prestigious rock critic tracing the footsteps of the book's subject: the quixotic, infamous rock critic named... Neal Pollack. What appears to be the ultimate in self-indulgence-naming the protagonist after yourself-Is just par for the Pollack satirical course. By removing the false barrier between author and character, he turns the aforementioned mirror towards a modern culture obsessed with reality TV, and the possibility that anyone could be a star. Now more than ever, art is an unabashed opportunity to put ourselves in some sort of grand context of human existence. It would be nearly impossible to talk about this book without falling into a landslide of pop culture references, since not only does the subject matter itself do so on almost every page, but the basic building blocks of the book do as well. Pollack the Critic is the love child of Forrest Gump and Lester Bangs, blindly careening throughout the most important watersheds in rock history, and influencing them with his savant-like ability to distill The True Spirit of Rock 'N' Roll. From the early days of Memphis, when Elvis runs over and kills Pollack's father, through the folk years of Dylan, onward with Lou Reed and the New York Scene extending into the seventies (all with brief stops in London, as musical movements dictate), and on through the LA punk scene of the eighties and grunge-era Seattle, Pollack the Critic just can't help being in the right place at the right time. All of this allows Pollack the Novelist to throw stones at the pretentiousness of rock stars and the critics who would elevate them-and by association, themselves-Into something holy. What could've been a terrible exercise in mining a well-known subject for easy laughs (see: Mel Brooks), in the hands of Pollack it turns into a well thought-out commentary on the myriad contradictions that have existed in the Rock world since it turned southern "black music" into a mainstream, corporate entertainment sector. The real joy in reading "Never Mind..." comes from Pollack the Novelist's ability to satirize on an all-encompassing level, snatching universals at will from the collective conscious of post-war America to embellish the framework of the rock and roll story line. As well, his careful rendering of each episode illustrates a broad knowledge of rock history that goes well beyond the surface. Not only do we get the facts, but the tone, the feeling has been carefully considered in each encounter with these legends of rock. Pollack's ability to fabricate the scenes so believably, as well as his excellent ability to turn a phrase, saves what could've been a trite attempt at cashing in on nostalgia. Accompanying the book is a CD (sold separately!) filled with songs pulled straight from the pages on the novel. Each song is a sort of style parody (to borrow a term from Weird Al) from the different periods that Pollack the Critic visits in the story. Pollack actually penned and sings the songs, and as terrible as that sounds, it's an enjoyable novelty if nothing else.
Rating:
Summary: Good Words
Review: Good life affirming stuff here. The kind you smell early in the morning when the rooster is pecking the hen to death because she plopped out yet another mouth to feed, wake up and live, sort of crap. Freshness.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much potty humor
Review: I don't know...I was already beginning to find Pollack's schtick tiresome when this appeared. Then this book, equally tiresome, adds to the mix an obsession with vomit. You know, reading through all these reviews I sort of wish Kathy Tontobreine would write a spoof about rock and roll. That would be funny.
Rating: 
Summary: Self-Indulgent Tripe
Review: I'm a big fan of Neal Pollack's. His "Anthology of American Literature" remains one of the funniest things that I've ever read. However, "Never Mind The Pollacks" is neither funny nor entertaining. It's a wonderful idea with a really funny title but it's almost as if Pollack is looking to see just how little effort he can put into something and still get people to read it. The book is the same joke over and over again, with a fake Neal Pollack (nee Norbert Pollackovitz) as the greatest rock critic to walk the face of the earth. The book details his adventures with every great band/singer of the last 40 years (the book ends with the fake Pollack's death in 1994) before their mainstream discovery, or rather, before their ascension to mainstream consciousness as a result of contact with Neal Pollack. Pollack subsequently alienates all of his music and writer friends by sleeping with the narrator's wives, doing massive amounts of drugs and waking up from these drug-induced blackouts caked in his own filth and vomit. Time and time again, Pollack wakes up full of vomit, frequently naked, to the vision of his musical messiah, Clambone Jefferson, who nods him in the direction of his next musical discovery. The only reason I found myself unable to put the book down was that I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible, so I could move on to reading another book. I'm all for bathroom humor. This is far beyond that. This is repetitive and childish material from a writer who is capable of so much more.
Rating:
Summary: 200 of the funniest puke jokes you'll ever read
Review: If you like rock and roll now, or if you liked rock and roll 20 years ago, you should read this book. Pollack has created a sort of alternate universe where all of rock and roll happened in a brief, sex, drug, and puke filled moment. In this alternate world, there is one man at the center of it all, and his name happens to be (by accident, so I hear...) Neal Pollack. He writes about, sings with, and gets sexually transmitted diseases from every major figure in American rock and roll, from Elvis to Kurt Cobain. This is a funny book. It is not a serious, complicated look at the history of rock. It is not a great work of profound literature. It is funny book, and it is filled with laugh out loud pieces, including an amazing dialogue about the existence of breakfast in heaven. This is a book for people who think rock stars and rock culture is ridiculous. Do not listen to the critics. Get this book now.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT WOULD IGGY DO?
Review: Iggy would break a bottle over his head and eat the glass while shooting heroin into as many veins that would accept the needle. He'd then look at YOU and tell YOU to read NEVER MIND THE POLLACKS.
Neal Pollack has written the perfect rock novel telling the story of "Neal Pollack" the greatest rock critic that ever lived. Pollack was there at every important moment and influenced the lives to everyone that mattered in Rock. I loved this book. Neal Pollack proves himself to be one of the most humorous authors writing today. If you LOVE rock, you need this book
Rating:
Summary: Neal Pollack, the Mel Brooks Of Literature
Review: In his writing, Pollack plays with genre cliches just like Mel Brooks did. Instead of seeing Never Mind The Pollacks as the end-point of literature, as some critics seem to insist, look at it as the early work of one of our great satirists. Rock-n-roll is a little overplayed as a topic, but this book is still hilarious. I look forward to seeing Pollack's work develop as he takes on weightier material.
Rating:
Summary: You'd Better Mind The Pollack
Review: Is Neal Pollacks' "Never Mind the Pollacks" "weak"? Is it chock full of "potty humor"? Is it "dumb" or "self-indulgent"? Yes it is. But so's rock-n-roll and that's the point. Rock-n-roll isn't about wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow thingies, smoking a pipe and wondering about the Kantian ramifications of a literary piece. It's about sex and drugs and hollering while you're throwing bottles at The Man. And so it goes that "Never Mind the Pollacks" isn't a Henry James-styled, let's all frolick in the solarium and wear lots of frilly stuff book about the frailty of the human condition. It's the sordid history of rock-n-roll and how one man, one drug addled, unbathed man, helped shape it. From witnessing his father die beneath the wheels of Elvis's truck to joining the Ramones (as Smokey) for their first gig to discovering Kurt Cobian under a bridge, this book takes us through the way the music was shaped (or mangled, as the case may be) and subsequently reviewed. Also, it's one of the funniest books ever written. If you're looking for sub-text and symbolism and a candidate for Oprah's book club, go somewhere else. But if you want the only book you can safely take with you to a Scorpions concert -- this is it. Trust me: "Never Mind the Pollacks" is the loudest book you will ever read.
Rating:
Summary: super awesome
Review: neal pollack is super awesome. if he was a bear, i'd stuff him and keep him in my living room.
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