Rating: 
Summary: Never Mind Never Mind the Pollacks
Review: Tom Clancy meets Leo Strauss with a dash of homoeroticism. Basically, it's the life story of Uday Hussein, as told through the eyes of a fictitious sister, Pussay. It begins with Uday as a dictator's spoiled kid and follows him as he grows into a dictator's psychotic son whom everyone fears. His idea of a good time is shooting live ammunition into restaurants' chandeliers. That or kidnapping young Iraqi women off the street. Not a very sympathetic character. Sort of Veruca Salt meets Sonny Corleone meets Scarface meets Caligula.
Rating: 
Summary: Laugh out loud satire with some deeper currents, too
Review: What Neal has written is a scathing, highly entertaining critique of rock journalism. His characters form a spectrum from the dirtiest, most indie to the vaulted pseudo intellectual set, and he wastes no time flaying them all on the razor's edge of rock. As a reader who isn't a real rock afficionado, the jokes were broad enough and about people I'd heard of or who had been introduced through the "history" enough to be laughed at - the book moves fast, and some punchlines didn't hit until a couple pages afterward, when I found myself laughing out loud. Tragedy + time equals comedy, and by the time the story rollercoasters from the fifties to the nineties, it becomes clear where rock comes from, and why critics will never touch the true source. I definitely think Never Mind the Pollacks is a growth over Neal's other work - he's stepping outside the mimic-satire of Anthology of American Literature and coming at the material edgewise, broadening the message. This book proves Neal has more to say, and I'm looking forward to whatever else is to come, be it rock music or indie lit.
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