A writer's journey, continued

by Chris Wright

Q: How many awards have you won altogether?

A: I've won three National Book Awards. I won the Booker Prize (I was briefly a British citizen in the '80s). I've won some human-rights awards, and some PEN/Faulkner thingamajobbers. But I would say my NAACP Image Award is the thing I'm proudest of. Because I'm not black, yet I was recognized as a black man by the NAACP. To me, that shows that they really get what I'm about, which is solidarity.

Comeuppance Neal Pollack makes a great many claims in his new book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature -- for example, that he inspired the Beat Poets to write poetry and had an affair with Toni Morrison. Now, with the emergence of evidence that many of Pollack's contentions are chronologically impossible, a firestorm is brewing in literary circles. The Phoenix reached some of the people closest to Pollack, who provide a more modest account of the author's life. Bernie Pollack, father He learned to drive before he could ride a bike. He never slept, never let his mother sleep. He was neat to a fault; everything had to be properly aligned -- not clean, just aligned. He eats nothing white; he won't eat cream cheese or sour cream or white sauce. He won't eat any sauce. We'd have spaghetti and meatballs and we'd have to wash his meatballs. He used to tell his mother everything and still does. He doesn't tell me everything, but he tells her. We knew when he had sex. I've seen Neal's work. I don't think anybody in my generation really understands it. Joy Bergmann, friend Neal is a generous man. He's generous with his laughter and his stories, but not with his cocktail bills. He has a conflicted personality. On one hand, he fancies himself a working-man's champion, defender of the little guy. On the other hand, he's been known to order cheeses from France. We were leaving a bar recently when a car went by and someone yelled "Yuppie!" Neal was crushed. He does not consider himself a yuppie despite his wardrobe. I don't think he's particularly fashionable, but he's often clean. The first time I met Neal, I took him to a rough-and-tumble bar called Sharon's Hillbilly Heaven. While I find it a comfortable place, Neal kept looking over his shoulder, afraid he might get attacked. He does not welcome danger. Patrick Arden, managing editor, Chicago Reader Neal Polk. . . . Wasn't he one of our interns? Dave Eggers, publisher, McSweeney's Neal is my lord and my rock and sometimes my salvation. He is a very hairy man, and he sweats profusely. Nevertheless, I consider Neal, when I am not considering him to be my lord or savior or rock, to be my lighthouse. A tall, thick lighthouse, towering over a foamy, churning sea. Oh sure, he is an old lighthouse, and yes, to hear his latest wife tell it, he may not be able to, ah, perform, as well as he used to, but still I stand by him, supporting him, propping him up if need be, just as a dutiful, devoted, younger, less hairy, better-dressed, and much more active and potent friend should do. I wish him the best in the short time he has left. As he inevitably fades away, I only want him to be happy. -- CW

Q: Some people say that much of the material in your book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, is made up. That you exaggerate your triumphs and play down your failures.

A: I don't know if that's necessarily true. If you read the book, I fail plenty. I mean, I don't always get the girl, I don't always get the best story. But it's not about success or failure in literature, it's about the art. Because failure can be just as successful as success, and success can be a failure, if you know what I'm saying.

Q: So your claim that you made friends with George Orwell while covering the Spanish Civil War is true?

A: It's like this: I was a kid. It's not like I was drinking with George Orwell. He was staying at my hotel, and I called him Uncle George, and every day before he went off to march with the prisoners he would come down and buy me a soda or a juice and we'd just talk; we'd talk about politics, and I'd often challenge him on various points. You know his real name is Eric Blair. . . . [Pause] You know that, right?

Q: Yes.

A: I didn't know if anybody who wasn't friends with him knew that. Yeah, Uncle George. The relationship never really evolved beyond that. I mean, we never became sexually involved.

Q: Hemingway once called you the "greatest writer alive." How did you get along with Hemingway?

A: Well at first. Again, I was young when I met him. As he grew older and I grew . . . older, but he was getting weaker and I was getting stronger, there was a certain, you know, son-having-to-kill-the-father thing. I didn't kill Hemingway, but we didn't get along that well -- we fought a lot, drank a lot.

Q: And you were friends with Fidel Castro?

A: I met Fidel in 1957. I was on an international softball team with him and Che Guevara and a young Salvador Allende. It was all leftist Latinos -- I traveled in some leftist circles then. Fidel and I still talk once or twice a week.

Q: You've had some life.

A: It's been rich -- a lot of writing, a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, a lot of politics. A lot of politics. Sometimes, when I think back, I can't believe I've never been elected president.

Q: But you've rubbed shoulders with some high-powered political figures.

A: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, again when I was a boy; John F. Kennedy was a dear, dear friend of mine, and his brother Bobby, and [his brother] Joe, who was tragically killed during World War II. I knew Lyndon Johnson, but we were kind of at odds, mostly about Vietnam. Nationally, I was friends with Henry "Scoop" Jackson -- we played rugby together. I'm not a Republican by nature, even though I'm definitely in their tax bracket. I believe in aid to the poor, I really do.

Q: Do you have any insight into the upcoming presidential elections?

A: Either Bush or Gore is fine with me, 'cause I'm rich and they're not gonna fuck with me. I think that if George Bush gets elected and your skin is a half-shade darker than mine, that probably means that you'll be going to prison. Gore probably won't be as bad in that way. But it doesn't really matter, because it's obvious to me, as it should be obvious to everybody else, that Ralph Nader is going to be elected the next president of the United States.

Q: Tell me a little about your stint as a war correspondent.

A: I've seen a lot of death. But you know what's amazing? Women are just at their best during wartime, because they're noble and they're helpful and they're just really horny and lonely. I've seen some terrible wars. Vietnam, though, was far and away the worst. The most important thing I've ever done in my life is uncover the Mai Lai massacre. What I saw in Vietnam changed me forever. I still hear the screams of my buddies in my head before I take my nap in the afternoon.

Q: What would you say is the gravest national-security threat facing the US right now?

A: Mexico.

Q: Many young Americans aspire to the kind of writing you do. What advice do you have for them?

A: I would say read my book, buy my book. . . .

Sub-shop guy: Ziti to go?

A: No, I don't have a ziti to go. . . . Live a life that is rich and full of sex, both with men and women. And never give up, never quit, never stop working.

Q: You're known as being quite a ladies' man. Give us some of your most notable conquests, along with a one-word description.

A: Zsa Zsa Gabor: bejeweled. Julie Christie: English, but still a tiger in the sack. Princess Stephanie: a risk. Amy Carter: a mistake. Most recently, I just got divorced from Janeane Garofalo -- funniest woman I've ever known, but just too damn. . . . [Grows reflective]

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Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.