Rating: 
Summary: Weak attempt to hang a novel on a great title
Review: Neal Pollack proves with this novel that he's at his best when working in the short form. The "Catching Up with Neal Pollack" and discussion questions are the funniest parts of the paperback edition. Pollack fails to mine his rich comic premise of its full potential. He doesn't explore the opportunities for genuinely inspired humor in any of the scenes he depicts, choosing instead to fall back on the same tired formula: Pollack parties with rock stars, says obnoxious but unfunny things, and vomiting ensues. This is just lazy writing, and the author is capable of much better when he's comfortable with the form in which he is operating. That said, I really liked the ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Dumbest
Review: Neal Pollack should do the reading world a favor and quit writing. How can a writer so untalented and witless get published? He writes like a vanity-press hack. I predict that a decade from now he will be a footnote to a footnote to a footnote.
Rating: 
Summary: Like a Clam (With a Bone in It)
Review: Never Mind the Pollacks is just like every other sanctimonious book that tells the history of rock 'n' roll and why we're supposed to care, but with one significant difference: this one is actually entertaining. I read it straight through in the course of one very empty day, which, in retrospect, probably was not a great idea, as this is a thing to be savored, but I couldn't help myself. I tried, Lord how I tried, but I simply could not help myself. So, if you're the least bit interested in the history of rock, or just enjoy being amused, or like seeing various icons skewered with needle-sharp wit, or merely enjoy buying things, this is the book for you!
Rating:
Summary: Roll Over Lester Bangs And Tell Hunter S. Thompson The News!
Review: Prior to this amazing book, Hunter S. Thompson was the undisputed monarch of Gonzo journalism. And Lester Bangs was his counterpart in music criticism. Their storytelling was channeled through massive quantities of drugs and sex and rock 'n' roll and drugs and drugs (they liked drugs) weaving wild tales of life and adventure. Yep, 'ol HST and Les, I sure-enough hear Neil Pollack knockin' at the door. To describe this book in a word: outlandish! A brilliant voice tells the (you really want to believe) story-behind-the-story. Even though it's all a farce, I couldn't help loving every word. Every punctuation mark, for that matter. And I don't even like the guy, much less completely agree with his point of view. Somehow, virtually every major rock artist and event get chronicled with Pollack dead-center on the action. Elvis gave him his non-Jewish name at his bar mitzva. He and Dylan hung tight in the early days. Along the way Pollack also influences The Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, Springsteen, and Kurt Cobain -- and a the prime component at Monteray Pop, Woodstock, and the Fillmore -- amongst lots of others. Be forewarned. Proceed very carefully here. You might make a mistake and assume this is a casual read because the story simply flys along at the speed of -- well pure crystal meth, I suppose. Nuh-uh! No sir-re-bob-a-roo! This here book's the making of a monumnental new member of Gonzo journalism at its damnable best. Roll over Lester Bangs and tell Hunter S. Thompson the news.
Rating:
Summary: Like Sam Phillips, In Search Of The White Wail
Review: Rock and roll is the people's music and in Never Mind The Pollacks, A Rock And Roll Novel by Neal Pollack, Neal Pollack, the critic, bounces off the people who make the music to always hilarious and often pointed effect. When he stops bouncing he usually finds himself down and out, yet luckily beneath the soft white underbelly of the holy cow of rock and roll, its teats thankfully there to squirt its rejuvenating fluids into Pollack's grateful face. That and he's watched over by the magic bluesman, Clambone, as enigmatic yet down to earth as the blues itself. Pollack often seems oblivious to his journey through rock, while we are fortunate enough to enjoy the likes of Elvis, Iggy, Dylan, The Stones, et al as they pass through the zonked out haze that is Pollack's world. But hey, that world is rock and roll. Don't think Pollack is some insignificant Forest Gump-like character batted around existence like one of Gump's ping-pong balls: Pollack is important enough that another rock critic wants to write his biography. And though it seems the lame and effete Paul St. Pierre may never truly grasp Pollack's importance or meaning to the world they both inhabit, a final face off with his subject gives him a double shot of the rock and roll life that Pollack has lived and St. Pierre has only written about from a distance. But screw the analyses. If you like to rock and like to laugh you can do both of these things until it hurts. Plus there's an apocalypse at the end. And it's not just some damn high school blowing up or something. So, I rate Never Mind The Pollacks #1. With a bullet.
Rating: 
Summary: The Forrest Gump of Rock
Review: This book is great fun. If you know more than a little about rock history and have a good sense of humor about it, you'll probably like this. It might not be as good for people unfamiliar with rock history, however. I was glad I had read Please Kill Me, the 70's NY punk scene book, a few years back because otherwise I would have missed a lot of the references. I probably didn't get a lot of jokes about Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
This book is the fictional biography of legendary rock critic and guru Neal Pollack, written by a younger, highly gentrified critic who knew him. Pollack just happens to create and then destroy every rock legend from Elvis to Cobaine. Pollack is the author's representation of the spirit of rock n roll, and I think it's a fine one. He is raw, angry, smelly rebellion incarnate-- for better or for worse.
Rating:
Summary: flop
Review: This book is like buying the second record from a band you like and discovering it sucks. Pollack hasn't done enough drugs to understand what kind of funny situations they produce. There was a lot of great drug humor in the 70s by people who really did drugs (not just smoked a little pot) like John Belushi, Cheech and Chong and Hunter Thompson (whose writings towers over Pollack's weak imitation). Anyone who is familiar with those guys knows that drugs can produce a wide variety of strange and funny situations above and beyond vomiting, passing out and soiling oneself. Vomiting and passing out are what drunk college students do. No one ever passes out from Cocaine, Acid, Speed, Mescaline or Mushrooms, which were all common rock star drugs. Sure, heroin and quaaludes make people pass out, but there are a lot of other effects they produce too (see Jim Carrol's piece, "A peculiar looking girl"). So, not having any hard drug experiences of his own (although often lying about it), Pollack is stuck with a one trick pony -"meet a famous musician + sex + pass out/vomit/and/or soil oneself => start over again". Anyone who thinks that this phoney crap is "real" or "what rock and roll is all about" is a clown.
Rating:
Summary: weak
Review: This book sparks my appetite for a version of this idea done right, and this ain't it.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Rock Book
Review: This is a funny, ambitious, breezy read, probably the best fiction ever written about rock-n-roll. Pollack's potty mouth keeps him from being considered a true peer of his more prudish contemporaries. That's such a shame. No American writer has more potential.
Rating:
Summary: Funny fun fun
Review: This is basically the kind of book I like to read when I'm depressed, bogged down because of the sad state of our world, and in need of some quick cheer. It brings the (good-sense-of-humor-owning)reader out of her funk. And that's what this book intends to do. It does not intend to educate (though it does - I'm not a huge Rock student, but it made a willing pupil out of me) or break hearts. Or last for all of eternity. Critics who call Pollack's writing a pale version of other humorists, and who claim that those humorists have been long-forgotten, are wrong. People still talk about Lester Bangs and Lenny Bruce, and people with still be talking about Pollack in 30 years. Maybe it'll be because he'll finally get caught for his serial murders, or because his 20th book will be the most fabulous thing ever written. I have hope in him yet.
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