Outdoors On Edge

Neal Pollack is the author of 11 bestselling books, a Jeopardy! champion, and is widely regarded as “The Greatest Living American Writer.” I chatted with him about this and more.

Last week, you explained your being “The Greatest Living American Writer” is a character. Speaking of characters, I’m an outdoor writer and, as such, drink, smoke cigars, devour meat, and couldn’t touch my toes unless I was leaning over to grab a beer. Explain yoga to me and what it’s meant to your life.

You can do yoga without touching your toes. It has nothing to do with flexibility. It’s a practice designed to calm the mind, and the physical part of it is important because people are often distracted from a calm mind by stiffness, pain and discomfort.

Yoga hasn’t kept me from dealing with addiction issues. It hasn’t kept me from dealing with grief and personal disappointment. But it’s something I can always turn to to relax me and help me pop my stiff joints back into place. You can smoke cigars and drink meat and still have a regular yoga practice.

You once wrote, “the internet can be a really cruel place. People say and do all kinds of mean stuff because they know that most of it doesn’t have real-world consequences.” How do you balance this truth with having to promote yourself and your work on social media?

Well, I don’t have a personal Twitter account. Most of my social media is Instagram photos of my pets and my game-show appearances, and then a

Neal Pollack shows off his basketball medal. — Photo by Mindy Tucker

regular Facebook presence. I find myself getting into political arguments on Facebook all the time, and people were especially vicious during COVID, but as my fame has waned, so has the day-to-day cruelty.

What is the Book and Film Globe?

Itisanindependentwebsitethatcovers the worlds of books and film and streaming TV. We publish reviews, interviews and cultural commentary, as well as some original reporting. I have been the editor-in-chief for more than seven years, and I’ll do it for the rest of my career if they let me.

You’ve successfully appeared on Jeopardy! and Pop Culture Jeopardy! Give us an amusing anecdote about each.

When I was on the original Jeopardy, my neck seized up and my fingers went numb and I made a contestant coordinator give me a massage. When I was on Pop Culture Jeopardy last year, my glasses kept fogging up. I am very high maintenance.

Let’s pretend I’ve never read any of your work. What two books of yours should I read and why?

Everyone seems to love my novel “Jewball,” about Jewish basketball players fighting Nazis in the 1930s. In this era of heightened antisemitism, I would love for that to continue to get play.

I love all my books, but you should dip into my first book, “The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature,” and then if you like it, keep on cruising.

What are you working on for your next book?

I have a few different concepts that I’m kicking around, but the one that seems to have the most market potential is called “My Life In Letters,” a memoir of my insane literary adventures.

My career hasn’t always been lucrative, but it has been interesting, and maybe my stories will inspire someone to do or not do something. Or at least keep people amused.

Visit Book and Film Globe at bookandfilmglobe. com Email Pollack at neal@bookandfilmglobe. com. Young is a Fredericksburg resident and avid outdoorsman whose work appears in the paper, Rock & Vine magazine, and other outdoor publications. Contact him at gayne@gaynecyoung.com.