In fact, I’d estimate each tale could be whittled by anywhere from 30-70% with the elimination of such pointless descriptions, and the actual tales would all improve. And, as if to illustrate my above point, only half a page later, Pollock goes on even a longer and more pointless digression:

Suddenly, a man wearing black-framed glasses stepped from his place in line at the urinal and tapped my old man on the shoulder. He was the biggest sonofabitch I’d ever seen; his fat head nearly touched the ceiling. His arms were the size of fence posts. A boy my size stood behind him, wearing a pair of brightly colored swimming trunks and a T-shirt that had a faded picture of Davy Crockett on the front of it. He had a waxy crew cut and orange pop stains on his chin. Every time he took a breath, a Bazooka bubble bloomed from his mouth like a round pink flower. He looked happy, and I hated him instantly.

Now, is this atrocious writing, in and of itself? No - it’s merely generic, but, again, it’s the aggregation of dozens and dozens of superfluous passages like this which make Pollock’s prose such a slog. After all, if one is chewing Bazooka bubble gum, and you say it blooms and looks like a flower, need the color pink be mentioned? No.

And, furthermore, there is not a detailed thing within this passage that serves any further point in the narrative. This tale, and all of Pollock’s tales in this book, are not Hitchcock films where such details play any significant role (i.e., real clue or MacGuffin). And, the point of all of this is that this sort of writing is such standard issue writing program tripe that its utter triteness totally belies the claims that Pollock is somehow a writer of originality or power. In fact, he is wholly generic, and indistinguishable from the thousands of poor deluded souls that apply for MFA programs.

The first tale ends in this manner, after the father has beaten the other man, showed pride at his son’s following his lead with the other man’s boy, and is having sex with the narrator’s mother: ‘As my parents’ bed thumped loudly against the floor in the next room, I lapped the blood off my knuckles. The dried flakes dissolved in my mouth, turning my spit to syrup. Even after I’d swallowed all the blood, I kept licking my hands. I tore at the skin with my teeth. I wanted more. I would always want more.’ Reading this, an astute and well-read reader is left not knowing whether to laugh or weep at the utter banality and over the top melodrama of this scene, so laced with the most absurdly puerile Freudian symbolism. I chose to grin, and move on. And, if you really need an explanation as to why this writing is so bad, then all I can say is spend a decade reading fiction - from Cervantes to the stuff published today, and if you still have a query, get a lobotomy.