Comic Author Sells Out

Neal Pollack is a funny, self-mocking author who got his start at Dave Eggers's McSweeney's and who claimed, when the zine's publishing side did his satirical The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, that he was "going to kick big publishing's ass." He changed his tune, however, after HarperCollins decided to publish an expanded paperback version of the Anthology--and now Pollack has made a deal with big publishing, in the person of HC executive editor David Hirshey, for a second book: a novel this time, but hardly a conventional one. It's called My Life in Rock, and it's a fictitious and satirical history of the music as told through the eyes of two rival rock critics, and featuring such real-life characters as Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain. Hirshey did the deal, for world, paperback and audio rights, with Daniel Greenberg at James Levine Communications.