Jared Marcel Pollen is the rare writer who can give lyric voice to philosophic insight. He is able to take a highly literate and unflinching look at the human condition and then make his account of it sing, a dark and compelling song. He is at the forefront of those important and talented new writers who can engage their subject matter without becoming reductionist; he is political without being crudely partisan, philosophic without being narrowly academic, and poetic without shallow sentimentalism. He aims at nothing other than a deep rendering of the human heart as it beats in the world today, and accomplishes it with an unusually fine pen.
His debut collection of stories, The Unified Field of Loneliness, is available now from Crowsnest Books, and his first novel, Venus & Document, will be available next year.
His debut collection of stories, The Unified Field of Loneliness, is available now from Crowsnest Books, and his first novel, Venus & Document, will be available next year.
“The stories in Jared Marcel Pollen’s debut collection proceed with a surgical intensity, as they endeavor to expose the crackling wires of consciousness itself. The Unified Field of Loneliness is a reminder that fiction exists in service to truth, a principle that Pollen embraces with courage, dexterity, and wit.”
— David Hollander, author of L.I.E
“Jared Marcel Pollen drills into moments that take both his characters and his readers far past the borders of comfort, where ordinary human maneuvering assumes transcendence.
These stories traverse the intimate, the global, the lonely, the brutal. His vision is as clear as it is subtle. We’re fortunate to have him and this astounding debut.”
– Nelly Reifler, author of See Through: Stories
“Jared Marcel Pollen’s fiction is rich with mind–with an intelligence both moral and mischievous. Readers of Helen DeWitt and Ben Lerner will find here another writer to admire.”
– Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening
Pollen is also a remarkable essayist, whose writing on political subjects looks out upon the world from a space where one might have once found Orwell, Hitchens, or Arendt. His perspective is an extremely valuable one in the world today, and his articles for Political Animal Magazine can be found below:
One Year Later: Reflections on #MeToo
Populism: The Long Con
A Quick Word on how Social Media is Rewiring the Democratic Ganglion
Trump & the Politics of Conscience
Trump’s Banality of Evil
New Jacobins
Pollen was born in Canada. He studied politics and literature at the University of Windsor and received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. His work has also appeared in The Millions, 3:AM Magazine, Quillette, and Salo Press, among others. He currently lives in Prague.
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