“Polanzak's voice is clear, but his mind is restless and the power of POP! is born from that restlessness. In his hands, there is no one story, no one narrative, no one reality, no easy answer. This is a beautiful, exhilarating book, one I won't soon forget.”
- Lucas Mann, author of Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere
“... So real it transcends genre labels—both a penetrating account of his father's death and an ambitious attempt to remake the memoir form. Polanzak is a fresh and energetic voice, an heir to Dave Eggers and Nick Flynn, and he's written the most innovative and engaging book I've read in ages.”
- Justin St. Germain, author of Son of a Gun
“Here is finally an example of everything a 21st-century book should be: both story and essay, entertaining and analytical, personal, ambitious, tender, outward-looking, rule-breaking, heartbreaking, funny, formally-inventive, and entirely unlike anything I’ve ever read. Here is literary potential realized in all its honest and imperfectly perfect glory. Here is an author struggling to make sense out of the senseless and bringing all he has to bear to the task. POP! is the book we’ve been waiting for. It is exactly what I want to read.”
- Rachel Yoder, editor at draftjournal
Press & Praise
GO AWAY, I'M READING - Podcast, "Episode 8: Mark Polanzak talks Pop and metafiction"
GRUBSTREET - Interview by Mark Cecil
KIRKUS - Review
LATE NIGHT LIBRARY - Interview by Doug Cornett
NECESSARY FICTION - Research Notes by Mark Polanzak
THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN - Excerpt & Self-Interview from "Prologue Two: Porcelain God"
SMALL PRESS BOOK REVIEW - Review by Sam Slaughter
VOL. 1 BROOKLYN - "How Memory Works: Brian Blanchfield and Mark Polanzak Embrace Narrative Fallibility" by Tobias Carroll
