Small
Corrections
to Neal Pollack's
Piece in the Times
Book Review.
- - - -
From Dave Eggers:
There's a piece in today's New York Times Book Review by Neal Pollack, about
how he adopted and now hopes to abandon the persona he created, i.e., "the
world's greatest living writer." Though the piece was good and enlightening,
there are some factual problems with the piece that need to be pointed out.
He quotes me as saying, "We're about to enter a new age of literary
celebrity." When I read this online this morning, I had to re-read it a few
times, looking for some postscript that indicated that, as Neal usually
does, he had made the quote up. Then I figured maybe the PS wasn't in the
online version. Eventually I learned there wasn't such a postscript, which is
too bad, because he did make that quote up, and it's a kooky quote to
attribute to me—or to anyone. That quote is as likely to have exited my
mouth as would an elf riding a three-headed mule. The quote doesn't sound
like anyone, really—no one would have said something like that, unless
they were addressing, in a bad late-'80s TV movie, some kind of misguided
depiction of a glitzy (ha!) book-industry convention.
The quote helps put some juice into his piece, but Neal knows I didn't say
it. "New age of literary celebrity"? Oh man. I don't even know what that
means. What does it mean?
The only thing I ever spoke to Neal about that might approach, in some way,
this idea of a "new age of literary celebrity" was my hope that whatever
came next in the literary world would be different, mellower, less tense,
less rivalrous, and thus altogether better. Neal and I
talked about writers like Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway, whose personas
were grandiose and larger than life, and who often made claims about being
the "top dog" or the "best since Tolstoy"—that kind of thing. We also
talked about how writers of previous eras would fight with each other
publicly, backstabbing and insulting and generally making the book world
look like the playground of too many antisocial and insecure teenage boys.
This was what Neal was so effectively parodying.
It was our hope at McSweeney's, and continues to be our goal with The
Believer, that the literary world could be one of community, of mutual
support, of spirited but nonviolent discourse—all in the interest of
building and maintaining a literate society. It's what we teach at 826
Valencia, too: that books are good, that reading is good, that everyone can
and should write in some capacity, and that anyone pissing in the very small
and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world is mucking it up for
everyone—and sending a very poor message to the next generation.
Neal's piece implies that I had a hand in the creation of his persona, but I
can't take any credit; he conceived his alter ego entirely on his
own. One day, I was given five or six of his "Greatest Living Writer" pieces
by a mutual friend. The stories were complete, polished, and required no
editing or embellishment. I read the stuff, and it was very funny, so it went up on
the website and in the journal.
He wrote more, and eventually there were enough stories for a book. So we
published the book, and, soon enough, Neal had taken the persona to all the
highs and lows he describes in his Times piece. He is correct in that, after
a while, when he said far too many things that offended far too many people,
we decided some distance between his persona and McSweeney's would be good.
He's also right that it was Dallas that sealed the deal. There, on stage, an audience member asked our opinion of other literary journals, and I said what I always say: "the more, the better." I named one new journal in particular that I liked a lot and Neal, with a comment that got a laugh, insulted that magazine. Afterward, I told him that I couldn't get behind that kind of thing, so we parted amicably.
Anyway. It's too bad that the same thing that always concerned people—that Neal often said offensive and factually incorrect things for which we all were blamed—happened again in this NYTBR piece.
The other factual correction is smaller, but also important. Neal says that
Andrew Wylie was hired to handle the business affairs of McSweeney's. This
is not correct. Andrew Wylie is a literary agent, not a CFO. The staff of McSweeney's comprises five people,
total, and we all work out of a converted one-bedroom apartment next to 826
Valencia in San Francisco. The business affairs are handled by Barb Bersche,
our valued publisher, who had no previous book-publishing experience when she came
onto the job four years ago. She is helped by Dave Kneebone, a documentary filmmaker who
does our bookkeeping part-time, and Heidi Meredith, who handles customer service.
Andrew Wylie does one thing for us, which he does very well and which helps us exist: he sells foreign
rights to certain McSweeney's books, because among our business staff of
three, only one person has been farther than Maine.
Neal Pollack was asked to respond to the above and this is what he wrote:
Apologies for any
inaccuracies in the piece or for any potential misinterpretations. I still
remember some conversation where some concept of "literary celebrity"
was mentioned, but who knows the context at this point—it was at least
seven years ago and I never should have put quotes around those words. It's
obvious from the way Dave and McSweeney's have gone in the last bunch of
years that traditional celebrity was the last thing he wanted. That sin was
mine, and mine alone. Now, as before, Dave and I will keep a friendly and
wary distance. I will only go to McSweeney's headquarters at 3 a.m., and then
only when I am very hungry. Goodbye.
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