Humorist Neal Pollack has a new persona: spokesman for the punk rock parenting movement

Six years ago, Neal Pollack landed on the literary map as a McSweeney's-powered character he called the "World's Greatest Living Writer." In playing the part, he became a beer-swilling, shirt-discarding, "one-trick retardo pony" (his words), known as much for holding readings in train station bathrooms as for his writing. Not exactly dad material. But Pollack has since abandoned the persona, grown up, gotten married and, yes, even had a kid. That transformation lies at the sleep-deprived heart of his new memoir, Alternadad (Pantheon, $23.95), which arrives just as the "hipster-parenting" phenomenon hits overdrive. Radar recently reached Pollack at his new-ish home in Los Angeles for a discussion about, among other child-rearing topics, the age at which it's appropriate to smoke reefer with your son.

"I think the psychology behind the alternadads is an unwillingness to give up every last bit of youth in order to become a parent. Not completely abandoning what they enjoyed before they had kids"Radar: How do you define alternadad?
Pollack: You know, I'm not entirely sure what an alternadad is.

At one point the book was going to be titled Daddy Was a Sinner, right?
Yeah, and in the end, I'm not really a sinner. I mean, I smoke weed and jerk off to Internet porn. I guess in some circles that would make me a sinner, but in most circles that would just make me a man. Trying to come up with a decent answer here ... and first of all the title is meant with a dose of irony. But you know, alternative culture was heavily marketed to us when we were younger and this sort of notion that you are outside of the mainstream, even though you are making very mainstream, conservative choices. It's sort of a joke in a way because there's nothing alternative about the way I'm parenting. Just trying to get through the day with a slightly modern aesthetic. I think the psychology behind the alternadads and alternamoms is an unwillingness to give up every last bit of their own youth in order to become a parent. Not completely abandoning what they enjoyed before they had kids. That would be the main characteristic.

One part of the book that strikes me as something of an alternadad manifesto, if you can call it that, is when you write to your unborn son: "The world is a horrible, horrible place. But I will try to make it as pleasant for you as I can."

I hate to use the term, but I think that's a very Generation X sentiment. There's this note of fatalism growing up. I love my kid and I have a great time with him, but it's been bittersweet raising him during the Bush years. I mean, my God, it's one of the worst periods in American history when it comes down to it. But here I am going to the gym class and filling up the sippee cup and mixing up the milk with honey—that's what dominates my days.

Much of the book you spend in a teeth-clenched frenzy, living freelance gig to freelance gig and on top of it, you're fighting coming to terms with these latent yuppie desires—a lot of the time you seem downright miserable.
Yeah, there were some miserable hours there—when you're broke it's not fun. There were some dark days—we lived in a crappy neighborhood and we had money problems and Regina was struggling to find work and I had plenty of work but I didn't have any money. Also, I left most of it out of the book, but I was battling with this persona I had.

You wrote about that in the New York Times Book Review, leaving behind the persona of the "World's Greatest Living Writer," and in that piece you famously broke up with Dave Eggers.
I left that out of the book.

Now that you're both dads, have you been able to reconcile and bond over parenting techniques?
I mean, I haven't talked to him in a while, but I'm sure we would have some things in common if we did. That's just a ... a ... yeah, we haven't talked in a while.

Okay, a more enjoyable topic: pot.
Who knows if that's even fun. Basically to me sometimes it's coffee, sometimes it's an afternoon cocktail, sometimes it's for sleeping—it just sort of serves different functions, but it's like as much a part of my diet as tea or cheese. Those are the other things I really like.

There will come a day when your son, Elijah, wants to smoke pot with you—what then?
Hell, I don't know. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Well, let's see, you're 11? Nope. Uh, okay, you're 25? Do what you want. But don't drive.

How about 14?

Fourteen? Nope. And if you do, don't tell me, and do not drive and do not get in the car of anyone who has [smoked pot]. My parents were not huge partiers but they always had a sort of laissez-faire attitude toward drugs and sex and it made it a lot less taboo to me and my sisters, and because of that we always operated on the straight and narrow. I got a bit freaky in my mid-'20s and got a taste for the weed—but when you are an adult, you can piss your life away however you want. I think I'll be the same with my kid—I'm just not going to make a big deal out of it. But if he screws up, there will be some consequences. I have a little bathroom off of my office that I use for various purposes, and I have my vaporizer on the floor in there. One day, he came into the bathroom and he asked what it was. I said, "Something daddy uses to help him with his breath."

In certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn, where I live, you walk by a café during sing-alongs and the Bugaboos are lined up like Escalades outside a nightclub—what's the parenting scene like in L.A.?
It's not quite as concentrated here as in New York and I don't think as intense, although I don't spend a lot of time in Santa Monica and I could be fooling myself. You don't get that same sense of being overwhelmed. But at the same time, there's definitely a scene. The Hanukkah party at my kid's pre-school basically turned into an indie rock concert. The woman organizing it knew all these bands—and it was a good show, too! It was the best rock show I'd been to in months. Teenagers were showing up for some of these bands that I guess had advertised on MySpace or something.

Every week there seems to be a new story in the New York Times Styles section about hipster parents.
I've kind of got hipster parent overload myself, and I've got a frickin' book coming out about it. I'm sure people are getting sick of it. It's funny, I didn't see it coming. I was living down in Austin, but even there I guess I saw little signs. There was a pizza parlor that hosted a kids' "Can You Draw Morrissey?" contest.

How do you feel about the Wiggles?
We're out of that phase. He watched them, and that was okay because I always imagined what punk versions of their songs might sound like, and it could be sort of fun. But I turned on the Wiggles when I tried to use the "Quack, quack, quack, quack, cockadoodle, doo" lyric as the epigraph of my book and they wanted to charge me $1,000. I was like, "You guys are greedy bastards—let me use your nonsense words, Jesus Christ!"

Photos: courtesy of Pantheon

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