Neal Pollack: Beneath The Axis Of Evil: One Man's Journey Into The Horrors Of War

After years spent toiling in the workaday world of legitimate journalism, Neal Pollack found minor literary fame writing humorous essays that lampoon Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and the other literary lions who view the ills of the world through the myopic prism of their own gargantuan egos. The first book put out by the publishing wing of Dave Eggers' literary empire, The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature compiled many of Pollack's pieces, and was later republished in an expanded edition by HarperCollins. Pollack's first novel is set to be published by HarperCollins, too, but in the interim, he's released Beneath The Axis Of Evil, a collection of post-Sept. 11 essays put out by So New Media, a tiny publishing house that, like Soft Skull Press, brings the DIY approach of 'zines and punk rock to book publishing. Pollack has described Beneath The Axis as the literary equivalent of an EP, and accordingly, the 62-page volume is less a meal than a midnight snack. Its brevity ultimately works in its favor: Where the intermittently hilarious but uneven Anthology tended to belabor jokes, Beneath The Axis doesn't stick around long enough to overstay its welcome. Once again adopting the persona of the world's greatest living writer, Pollack here does more than just report on global affairs; he becomes part of them. Taking new journalism to its illogical extreme, he hunts down Saddam Hussein, meets Kim Jong Il, and comes to blows with Osama bin Laden and his evil consort, Jimmy The Jihad Chicken. Beneath The Axis is primarily concerned with geopolitical matters, but Pollack still finds time to console the Chicago firemen torn apart by the Oprah/Jonathan Franzen feud and to attend a demise-of-Talk cocktail party where he offers the pithy postmortem: "Here's to Talk Magazine. It died as it lived. Horribly."For all the literary and highbrow references, Beneath The Axis is ultimately a boy's adventure tale, complete with frequent fisticuffs, exotic locales, bionic reporters, and gratuitous sex. It won't convert many to the Pollack fold; those who found Anthology silly and self-indulgent will feel the same way about everything here. But for readers tuned into Pollack's frequency, it's a delightful lark.