Search - Neal Pollack, Pine Valley Cosmonauts :: The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature

Pollack aims at pretentious snobs like no-one before

Andrius Uzkalnis | Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom | 10/03/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is not a stand-up: just a very, very sharp and merciless parody of those self-styled intellectuals that you can sometimes catch on National Public Radio (nothing against NPR, you understand). Pollack makes fun of the "travel writers" who pretend to be above the tourist crowd and yet offer nothing but shallow banalities from which they claim to be so different. The mumbling tone of these writers, narrating from their own books, is captured perfectly; cheesy "ethnic" background tunes add to the effect of authenticity. This is great.Writing is superb: Pollack spices the steady stream of narrow-minded pretentious cliches with bits of similarly narrow-minded politically correct remarks about unfair way of the world. You can practically believe he is a bona fide overpaid writer, pretending to shed tears over injustices of capitalism (and then employing a fierce literary agent who manages to get top dollar for these brave unmaskings of greed).Self-righteous contributors of certain periodicals (and, if I may note, some authors of Lonely Planet travel guides) need to listen to this CD every morning before they put pen to paper - a healthy dose of irony will do them no harm. For all others - this CD is really a very good fun. If you like sharp, refreshing comedy, go and buy it now."