THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Amusing Guy Beneath the Axis of Evil: One Man's Journey into the Horrors of War by Neal Kg Pollack (So New Media, 64 pp. $10). This winter, the more radical of the two...
...But nothing proves effective in breaking his spirit, except locking him in a prison cell with Susan Sontag, "or the thing that used to be Susan Sontag...
...As she "moved toward me, tongue extended, I raced for the door and banged on it frantically...
...Even at its worst," he explained, "it was somehow cathartic and sweet, even necessary...
...Terrorists are cowards!' I shouted...
...Oh please let me out!' " Funny as this is, much of the humor feels forced and, what's worse, tired...
...How could readers "really want to hear what I think...
...But as he considered the question, he began to wonder whether readers want to hear what any writer thinks about the war...
...The American government twice detains him for having dangerous views...
...Stranger editor Dan Savage asked Neal Pollack, the self-designated "Greatest Living American Writer," to speak up for the apathy faction by penning a piece entitled "Who Cares...
...Cathartic," "sweet," and "necessary" are not adjectives one would use to characterize Pollack's latest collection, Beneath the Axis of Evil: One Man's Journey into the Horrors of War...
...Unfortunately, even "funny"—Pollack's trademark—may not be completely appropriate...
...Jeff Koyen, new editor at the New York Press, recently wrote that "Pollack may have had his day—I think it was a Wednesday, sometime back in 1999—but if that boy doesn't diversify but quick, he'll be a footnote in no time...
...Jeremy Lott...
...Mildly amusing" seems closer to the mark...
...George W. Bush is a man transformed...
...Various lefty voices have sounded off in its pages, including Christopher Hitchens (pro-war) and Sherman Alexie (antiwar...
...Pollack" escapes death several times because the Islamofascists recognize him as the author of The Secret Pleasures of Fundamentalism and America is Evil and Wrong, as well as numerous articles in Details and Harper's...
...Pollack initially refused on the grounds that "I do care, and I'd be an idiot if I didn't...
...Thus began what became last month a widely noticed, three-thousand-word rant that told writers on both sides to "shut the hell up...
...Pollack has found some recent notoriety for his Stranger essay on babbling writers...
...The book stitches together several pieces (most written for the New York Press) into a disjointed narrative...
...Part of the fallout of September 11, Pollack declared, "has been an explosion of absolutely terrible writing...
...The hero is "Neal Pollack," a courageous American adventure writer ("with a chest made of brick"), alterego of plain vanilla Neal Pollack...
...Beneath the Axis of Evil begins on September 11 in New York and ends in October 2002 in Iraq, where the hero slips starving children $20 bills and tells them to prepare for sweet death rained down from above...
...In certain circles, Pollack is famous for his riffs on pop culture, and the madcap adventures of his alter ego are used to mock figures in the news: gullible Western liberals, crazy Islamic militants, paranoid government bureaucrats, as well as people convinced that fascism has descended on America...
...In between, "Pollack" travels to such exotic locales as Afghanistan, Israel, and Wisconsin, having sex along the way with many famous women and interviewing Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Jimmy the Jihad Chicken...
...Irony is dead...
...This winter, the more radical of the two Seattle-based alternative weeklies, the Stranger, took to running long essays about war in Iraq...
...In an otherwise unsparing essay, however, Pollack somewhat contradictorily carved out an exception for the writing immediately following September 11...
...But he needs to grow and find an adult topic before he tries another book...
...Andrew Sullivan, Peggy Noo-nan, Bill Maher, Poets Against War, and Hendrik Hertzberg were among those on the receiving end of a series of vicious literary smackdowns...
Vol. 8 • April 2003 • No. 29
