NEVER MIND THE POLLACKS

I’m reading Neal Pollack’s Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel right now, and it’s pretty darn funny. I was afraid I wouldn’t really get the music in-jokes, and suspected it wouldn’t be as good as The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature (it isn’t), and it gets a bit repetitive, but it still makes me giggle. It follows a fictional rock critic, “Neal Pollack,” through his life and career from the 1950s to the 1990s, during which he is of course conveniently in the right place at the right time to participate in all the great moments in rock history (Elvis plays at his bar mitzvah, he has a brief career as “Smokey, the elusive fifth Ramone,” etc.). I particularly love that he has a brief affair with Wanda Jackson:

“I love you, Wanda,” he said one night as they lay beneath the stars because they couldn’t afford a hotel.

“I know you do, baby,” she said. “Could you pass me the bourbon?”