Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock
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Book Reviews of Knockemstiff
Book Review: Daringly unforgettable
Summary: 5 Stars
I live approximately 80 miles away from Knockemstiff, Ohio. It's little more than a ghost town sitting just southwest of Chillicothe, a small city near the northern border of Ohio's section of Appalachia. There was a point in my checkered career when, for nine years or so, I regularly made trips to southern Ohio and dealt with individuals such as those who populate the pages of KNOCKEMSTIFF, Donald Ray Pollock's collection of masterful, haunting short stories. I always told myself that I should write a book about the people I met and the incidents I experienced. Pollock though has beaten me to it, and has done a better job than I ever could have.
The residents of KNOCKEMSTIFF, at least as described in Pollock's stories, stumble through a hardscrabble existence preoccupied with fulfilling the needs and satisfying the impulses of the moment. It is a place where entitlement to a regular government check is an element of attraction when choosing a mate, a point on the map where bad decisions and nasty happenstance meet and create poverty, their [...] stepchild.
Pollock's descriptions of people and events here are unflinching; there is a dark humor that informs his work, but it is the soft kiss that precedes the bare-knuckled punch. His stories are by turns subtle and brutally straightforward. One containing stark, sharp elements of both is "Assailants." Del and Geraldine have a child together, which makes one shudder. Del is an alcoholic prone to embarrassing behavior during blackouts, while Geraldine is fresh out of a group home. Pollock paints a matter-of-fact picture of Del changing the baby with the last diaper in the box and then stealthily raiding her college fund --- begun by Geraldine --- to buy beer (not diapers) at the local carry-out. One wants to reach through the pages of KNOCKEMSTIFF and throttle him; it is a simple scene, but one that stays in the mind.
The relationship between parent and child is played out with poignant and painful frequency throughout the selections in KNOCKEMSTIFF. "I Start Over" is another story that haunts, taking place for the most part in a drive-through line at a Dairy Queen, where Big Bernie Givens, self-described as "stuck in southern Ohio like the smile on a dead clown's [butt]," finds his own bad decisions and those of others --- particularly his son's --- coming to a sudden and unexpected head.
Knockemstiff is a desolate place where hope springs eternal just before being trampled underfoot by those who behold it. It is a place where illicit commerce, subtle and otherwise, is done in a local donut shop, where blood plasma is the stuff of commerce, where those who escape, as in "Hair's Fate," simply go from bad to worse. The only "winner," if you will, is the monster who we meet in "Dynamite Hole," who manages to play the system with an innate canniness that is ultimately frightening.
Pollock has been compared favorably to Chuck Palahniuk and Harry Crews (I would add the late Larry Brown to the list). His tour of Knockemstiff is unforgettable, funny, frightening, depressing and enlightening. And one senses he has only begun to scratch the surface of the stories he can tell.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Book Review: Like diamonds, Knockemstiff is razor sharp. Donald Ray Pollock can communicate the geological storms that make up our lives.
Summary: 5 Stars
It's difficult to describe the complexity of emotions I experienced while reading 'Knockemstiff". On the one hand, I was completely engrossed with the characters in the stories who occassionally reappeared later on in the book. On the other hand, the book knocked me out, almost cold stiff. The pain, suffering, and hardship that these people experienced, most often without insight about their own lives, had the power to both numb me and stab me in the gut. This is a characteristic response to experincing trauma, either directly or vicariously through the description of others or the absorption of others' sufferings. I am a psychotherapist by trade and it isn't often that a writer can create an internal landscape and an external environment that is the right home for his characters - the ONLY home. Mr. Pollock does this. This home is in the most rural part of Ohio and the people who inhabit this place live with intrinsic terror, poverty similar to a third world nation, with their hopes squelched before they hit the light of sun. 'Higher education' is a term more likely to mean going to school under the influence of meth or huffing, rather than any reference to high school or beyond.
I could smell the sausage in the butcher store, the rot in the darker stories. I could almost feel enough hope to pray that a character or two would takes a leap of faith. Yet that is both the tragedy and the brilliance of this book. A leap of faith can be taken only if one believes there is something on the other side, that there is a mentor to believe in, a future worth risking everything for. These folks living in Knockemstiff, from the worker in the drive-in to the frantic and terrified man who only wants to get through the drive-through with his terror and self-loathing undetected, do not know enough to conjur an image different from Knockemstiff, Ohio. This is their world in the cosmological sense. They are the REAL thing, not the shadow lives in a Platonic cave.
Knockemstiff is a place of Hollers, poverty similar to what I saw in Ethiopia, a place where the disenfranchised of our nation are born, see their lives as human waste once they realize that hope is an illusion, and then they die - some sooner than others. This book is about these people. Each of them is different; the individual characters are brilliantly detailed and everyone carries their uniqueness from the book's pages to the reader. When I was reding this book I was there, no where else. I don't want to give up more than the jacket flap can tell you about the stories' subject matter. What I do want to tell you is 'Buy This Book'.
I don't know about a lot of things but I do know about literature and I do recognize great writing when I read it. I read this book twice and will read it again. Mr. Pollock brings Knockemstiff to life and I can't help but wonder how close to the heart this book is for him.
Book Review: Characters as real as dirt
Summary: 5 Stars
This marvelous story collection is Winesburg, Ohio for those who live at the fringes of civilized society. It showcases the residents of Knockemstiff, Ohio, some of whom appear in more than one story. If you like stories about gritty people whose actions are motivated by raw emotion rather than rational thought, people with few redeeming qualities, poor self-esteem, bad manners, and little hope, this is the collection for you.
Two things make these stories work. First, the writing is of the highest quality: sharp, poignant, and honest. Second, the stories are character-driven and plot-driven at the same time, a rare blend in literary fiction. The stories are actually about something beyond the characters. Things happen, interesting and sometimes shocking things, as the stories progress from a clear beginning to a clear ending. For instance: **Semi-Spoiler Alert** A young draft evader who lives in the hills comes across a brother and sister having sex, kills the brother and rapes the sister before returning to hiding. A bodybuilder takes steroids at the insistence of his father who wants to recapture his glory days by living vicariously through his son (the son, of course, comes to no good end). Two kids steal a dealer's supply of pills with fantastic plans about selling them and starting a new life, but end up using all the pills. These are a few examples of the tragic and depressing but realistic life stories depicted in Knockemstiff. **End of Spoiler**
Make no mistake: the characters in Knockemstiff represent the underbelly of America. They are seedy, violent, uncouth, racist, uneducated, vulgar, and more than a little creepy. If you don't like a story unless you like the characters, you won't like this book. If stories don't appeal to you unless they are morally uplifting, you won't like this book. But make no mistake also: the characters in Knockemstiff are as real as dirt. Pollock perfectly captures the rage and hopelessness and bewilderment that infuses people who society has left behind. If you appreciate good writing for its own sake, if you think damaged people can be just as interesting as virtuous people in the hands of a fine writer, if you value the insight that comes from intense examination of the darker aspects of the human soul, Knockemstiff is a book you will appreciate and think about and remember.
Book Review: The Bruised, Vulnerable, Ill-Starred Inhabitants of Knockemstiff, Ohio
Summary: 5 Stars
Donald Ray Pollock is talented. His style of writing is one that feels like spontaneous impressions of a tribal people from which he takes the reader by the collar and spins wild tales, all the while making us believe each of his weirdly comic/tragic characters actually exists. Pollock's vantage is not unlike the gopher who happens to burrow up into a strange neighborhood, glances about is total disbelief, then scurries back down in wonder about the current state of the world: the mound he leaves behind is this highly entertaining book.
Though Knockemstiff is an actual place in the remnants of a once settled and civilized Ohio, Pollock uses the place as the matrix from which he devises some of the strangest stories in literature. Though the book is a collection of short stories, Pollock ties some of the characters together in different stories giving the reader the idea that the number of creatures who populate this degenerate town are so few that they must serve as actors more than once. These people are often disabled by drugs, alcohol, physical abnormalities, mental derangements, or the products of barely together couplings that mutually drive partners into bizarre behaviors.
Pollock can create suggestive sexual scenes only to remind the reader with the use of brittle descriptions that the surroundings are peppered with detritus, enough to keep the lights on. Each of the aimlessly unhappy folks we encounter retains an edge of humor (despite some impressively dour physical attributes) and that is in the end what keeps the reader engaged. To retain interest in these folks through eighteen varied (but not dissimilar) stories Pollock is forced to occasionally rely on fantasy episodes out of town, but he deftly keeps his characters in the dirt/mud/snow of Knockemstiff in a manner that keeps the thwarted dreams grounded.
Pollock uses a language that is rich and colorful, and even while his characters seem to be disengaged from a happy life, he manages to take some flights into the beauty of nature - yes, even in Knockemstiff, Ohio the land can be beautiful. The stories he has written can be read quickly, but the metaphors each carry need some time to absorb. There is a little of each of us somewhere in Knockemstiff, whether we admit it or not. For a first novel, this is a winner! Donald Ray Pollock IS talented. Grady Harp, April 08
Book Review: WINESBURG...on crack
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1919, Sherwood Anderson published WINESBURG, OHIO and changed literature with his book about desperately lonely people living in a little Ohio town at the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age.
Anderson was from Clyde, Ohio, still a little town between Cleveland and Toledo. I sought it out on a road trip to see Bob Seger at the Toledo Speedway Jam in 1983 when I was in college. Clyde was the same H-shape as the H-shaped Winesburg in the novel (the hardware store in the novel had become a tanning salon when I stopped by, if I remember correctly).
KNOCKEMSTIFF can be placed on the same shelf as WINESBURG, OHIO. That's a compliment, folks.
Both books share similarities: a small, alienated community filled with loners and losers (the naked bodybuilder whacked out on steroids in front of the McDonalds in KNOCKEMSTIFF reminded me of the desperately lonely teacher in WINESBURG who runs down the main drag naked during a night storm--and no one sees her), a unique collection of short stories that include cameos from other stories, and just some awesome writing.
But KNOCKEMSTIFF digs deeper and ventures further into the darkness at the edge of town. I've been away from my little Ohio town but I've heard about how the drugs eating away at the big Western city where I live are now seeping into every town and holler in Ohio and Appalachia. I remember dreaming about having cable TV someday in my town and, well, they now have cable but they also have crack and crystal meth too. Sad.
I also love the fact that Donald Ray Pollock spent years working for a living and living for his work with the good people of Ohio. That's something you can't just learn in a classroom and would take more years than you've got to make up.
I visit Ohio every year and now I plan to make a roadtrip to see Knockemstiff for myself, just like I did to find Winesburg before.
KNOCKEMSTIFF is one of the best reads I've had in a long time. Fantastic job, Mr. Pollock!
(If you loved this book, then also look for a book called CRUMB, about growing up in a small town in West Virginia. It's also filled with a lot of humor and tragedy too. And check out WINESBURG, OHIO since it's KNOCKEMSTIFF's great, great granddaddy in some ways).