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Neal Pollack makes a startling — startling — confession in the Times Book Review: He lives in the shadow of his persona. Despite his arrogant posturing as the "World's Greatest Living Writer," Neal Pollack is but a mere mortal, a human being, a man who feels pain at the hand of his literary alter-ego and is but a mere victim of the McSweeney's literary machine. Tears of clown, yadda yadda. This sort of "I'm a human being, brother," is familiar ground for Pollack.

So where, then, does the Literary Asshole persona end and the real Pollack begin? If Gawker's collective memory serves us right, it must've been the Persona Pollack that complained to us last year about a random account we had of him in Chicago with some young lady (which, we might add, suggested no sort of untoward behavior). Yes, it was his persona who placed several calls from Austin to set us straight. The panicky man on the line, the one whining, "My God, if my wife sees this, I'm toast!" wasn't the real Pollack. Our bad.

Persona [NYT]
Related: McSweeney's Dave Eggers ain't hearing it. Catfight! [McSweeney's]