Neal Pollack, the self-dubbed "Greatest Living American Writer," tried to throw ice water on me last Saturday night.

We were in Luxx, a small club in Williamsburg, and Pollack had taken the stage with his band, the Neal Pollack Invasion, on this stop of his 20-city fall tour this fall. Pollack was promoting his new novel "Never Mind the Pollacks" and the accompanying record of the same name.

It all seemed to be too perfect as an event promoting a book which satirizes the bloated mess that is American rock criticism -- the hipsteratti crowd, the grimy obscurity of the club in Brooklyn and Pollack yelling "fuck you" between songs while trying to douse us in water. Fortunately, the crowd was small enough that we had room to dodge the liquid onslaught and the half-hour set short enough that we didn't have to listen to the nearly tone-deaf Pollack scream into the microphone for too long. Thank goodness for small favors.

Pollack is a part of a new generation of young American writers gaining notoriety through independent publishing companies like McSweeney's and an Internet presence to rant from, like his website, Nealpollack.com. But what makes Pollack more intriguing, and at moments more entertaining, than his counterparts is his simultaneous spitting in the face of artistic establishments coupled with his insistence on inserting himself in these same canons he wants to destroy. If these two goals seem at cross-purposes, they are, but Pollack's unfailing bravado and undeniable wit barrels through it. At times, the novel's barrage of references can seem too frenetic or the tone-less wailing on the album much too awful, but then Pollack lands a priceless zinger of an observation and all is forgiven.

"Never Mind the Pollacks" begins and ends in Williamsburg, as it catalogues the amazing life and times of Neal Pollack, a recently deceased rock critic who witnessed or influenced every major moment in rock n' roll history for the last fifty years. His compatriot and sometime nemesis Paul St. Pierre discovers Pollack dead in his apartment off Bedford Avenue and takes it upon himself to retrace Pollack's steps across America and England, talking to the players still around "Citizen Kane"-style, as he writes the critic's biography. From living next door to Elvis while growing up Hasidic in Memphis to introducing Kurt Cobain to that shadowy figure referred to only as "the Widow," Neal Pollack the character either did drugs with, screwed or inspired nearly every musician on the scene and a few of the writers as well such as Lester Bangs. This is not the sort of book for those who find pop culture reference and its vocabulary of knowing superiority tiresome, as this is its modus operundi.

The accompanying CD "Never Mind the Pollacks" follows in the same vein, consisting of parodying covers of influential rock songs that amuse in the memory of their original, with absolutely nothing to do with Neal Pollack or the literary establishment. The musicians Pollack performs with, in particular Jim Roll on guitar and Neil Cleary on drums, are actually quite good but this seems to be an afterthought to the whole project's glib tone. The most important thing to remember here is that Neal Pollack is a slightly balding, pudgy white guy writer who has no business trying to be a rock star. He can't even figure out how to use a microphone without breaking it. And yet there he was on the stage anyway, stripping off his t-shirt to resounding groans as though he were a new Michael Stipe for the post-millennium.

When I first thought about moving to New York, I came for a weekend visit and as a tourist made it a point to wander around Washington Square Park and have a disappointing cappuccino on the corner of Bleecker and McDougal Streets. I think I wanted to soak up the remnants of the Beat Generation I'd read so much about, but all I noticed were those street signs warning drivers not to honk unnecessarily or suffer a fine. Some of the funniest, and simultaneously self-indulgent moments in "Never Mind the Pollacks" include the Pollack character's influence on this period in New York, as he "discovers" Woody Guthrie's folk music at the same time as Bob Dylan, then seduces Joan Baez right from under Dylan's nose. Pollack and Baez retreat to the country together where Baez, surely one of the most sainted girlfriends ever captured in print, writes great music and tends to Pollack physically and sexually.

As ridiculous, fantastical and hilarious this whole incident is, we wouldn't be able to relive it without the cataloguing impulse of a character who sees his contributions as a selfish boyfriend and a backstabbing friend on par with that of the great musicians of our time. There is a powerful mystique surrounding American rock history and the personalities that shaped it. But without the historians and the critics, we'd be in the dark about how decadent and beautiful it all was. If people who can't do teach, then people who can't be originators of cool write about it. With the help of movies like Almost Famous, the concept of the rock critic as the sage of the modern generation is alive and well. Pollack acts out in fiction and in performance the ultimate fantasy of the critic by inserting his persona into the center of history. He doesn't just write about the cool ones, he is one of the cool ones -- or so goes the book's argument.

It would be easy to read this revision of history as not just a little arrogant and antagonistic on Pollack's part. But anyone who's been to a recent rock show knows, it ain't cool to dance to the music and it's even less cool to be earnest. Today's hipster must wave his irony and superiority like a red flag. Yet beneath this disavowal lies a writer with a whole arsenal of carefully-collected trivia, one who can make a joke about the Strokes in one breath and Philip Roth or Henry James in the next. Not to worry Don DeLillo or Joyce Carol Oates, Neal Pollack may thank you for a year's worth of three-ply as he sings his punk ditty "I Wipe My Ass On Your Novel," but underneath that ironic disdain, all you'll find is a fan.

About Karen Wilson

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