Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Alternadad"

Neal Pollack is the author of several works of satirical fiction, including The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and the novel Never Mind the Pollacks.

He is also, according to his publisher, "probably the least likely father you’ve ever met: a pop-culture-obsessed writer and self-styled party guy known mostly for outrageous literary antics. In typical fashion, he responded to the birth of his son by forming a mediocre rock band and taking it on tour. Now, in Alternadad, he tells the hilarious and poignant story of how he learned to be a father to his son, Elijah, after the failure of his short-lived rock ’n’ roll dreams."

Neal put Alternadad to the "page 69 test" and reported back:

On Page 69 of my memoir, Alternadad, I go out partying with a couple of random "fans" who I'd met on the Internet. Meanwhile, my wife Regina thinks she goes into labor, calling me at 3 AM to tell me to come home. At that moment, I'm in some kind of college apartment with posters of Jim Morrison on the wall, smoking a joint of hideous schwag. All the central themes of the book's first half are there: My social immaturity, my wife's slightly bossy henpeckiness, and the long, slow decline of my Neal Pollack "persona."

Meanwhile, Regina complains that "everyone" is having a baby but her. When I point out that not everyone is having a baby, she posits the counter-example of Sarah Jessica Parker, who had recently given birth. She concedes that Sarah Jessica Parker is not, in fact, everyone. This conversation is also representative of the rest of the book. Regina and I are part of a generation of adults that finds the whole concept of adulthood perplexing, even unreal. It's as though we're saying, "We can't be parents now, because we were once young." This is probably the same mishugas that parents go through every generation, but slap on an extra layer of irony and pop-cultural awareness and, voila, you have Alternadad.

Many thanks to Neal for the input.

Read one excerpt from Alternadad or another.

Among the praise for Alternadad:

“Both laugh-out-loud funny and cry-softly poignant. . . it just may be the most offbeat book about parenting ever written. . . makes the reader break out into smiles nearly constantly.”
-–Booklist

“Engaging...Pollack is...America's postmodern Erma Bombeck.”
-–Texas Monthly

“Witty...Pollack hasn't lost his flair for tongue-in-cheek commentary.”
-–Publisher's Weekly

“Hilarious. . . [his son] Elijah is. . . a precocious child with the face of a Botticelli and the temperament of Dennis the Menace.”
-–Los Angeles Times

"Alternadad is peppered with the scary-funny one-liners we’ve come to expect from the intriguing American crank Neal Pollack. But it's also a surprisingly romantic tale of love and hope and even civic-minded warmth, set amidst the dingier blocks of Chicago and Austin and the trash-can fires of Philadelphia."
--Sarah Vowell, author of Assassination Vacation