Customer Reviews

Knockemstiff

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

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

Donald Ray Pollock's my hero. He's taken a leap into space and he's not coming back. I'm only half way through this book, but it's already been worth the money. More than worth it. I'm taking my time with it.

This man who stopped at age 45 to write his book; he felt it was now or never. He didn't want to go to his grave without trying. Now he has carved out a career -- away from driving trucks or working at a meat packing plant. That's guts, and he's good.


I don't know where he gets his stories, how he writes so well, or how he sleeps at night. But he's driving at 120 miles per hour to a place that's impossible to describe. Just amazing.

Bill

These stories are intense, quirky, a little down-dirty, and fascinating.

If someone had described this book to me before I'd read it, I might have thought "not my thing". The characters are not especially likable, the stories are not particularly uplifting. Then again, that's part of the point. Even though part of me kept thinking "can't one of these folks get their bleep together and live a happy life?", the rest of me was busy wallowing in their misery.

Aside from the content of the stories, the writing style is interesting. Some of the descriptions made me chuckle, and a few of them brought on the thought "yeah, that's it exactly!".

There are a couple of Pollock's stories to be found online if you want to get a taste before committing to the book- but it's hardly necessary. You probably won't be able to turn away.

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).

I grew up in a struggling farming community in Southeast Missouri. My hometown's greatest claim to fame was the day it was listed in Newsweek as the "Meth Capital of America." I don't know if the title still stands, but it wasn't until I slipped away and into the sophisticated nether-regions of the rest of the world that I realized what a stark, bark-and-barley life I'd been raised in.

KNOCKEMSTIFF, a collection of bare-bones stories by newcomer Donald Ray Pollock, brought back home all of the late night drive-arounds, the cloudy sense of life's last end, the heart-knuckling boredom that fills such places, and which can grip at and suck away on your heart just as the dark, clayey mud that fills the fields will grip and suck at your shoes.

You won't make it to the end of the first story -- REAL LIFE -- before it hits you that you're reading something that will leave more than a few papercuts as an impression. The substance is hard to talk about without making the collection sound pie-faced. Say hello to trailer trash, low-rent thieves, incest, lewdness at the laundromat, and enough drugs to make Keith Richards go pale. While the tales are populated by people who think "grammar" is the woman married to "grampa," the heart of every story soars far beyond truncated slang and self-destruction as entertainment.

There are moments where it gets hard to stomach, but only because Pollock is so dismally unforgiving to his characters. And he does such an amazing job of transmitting this ghost town's flat, mindless gloom that you may find yourself blinking against the hard misery of it all. Read about the slow, steady death of a town, and the slow, steady deaths of its citizens. It gets a bit repetitive -- the monotony of the landscape is that visceral -- and sometimes the stubborn lack of hope is a bit grating.

That might just be me railing against my own past, against a childhood surrounded with as many blank-eyed souls, wondering if this kind of snapshot -- perfectly rendered though it may be -- is as important as the topics Pollock adamantly refuses to court: redemption and strength. Pollock's last story, THE FIGHTS, is about the scrabbling obstinancy of life and the people who are borne down and away by it. But the boxers are tired, and leaning close enough to kiss through their sweat and blood. They don't kiss. They just hold each other up and spin. Both, it seems, have lost, but until the bell rings, this is Knockemstiff. Brutal, balletic, bruised.

It hits you, but won't let you drop.

Demented dark writing of small town ohio life. This is not a book for your mother to read unless your mother has serious problems too. Superb writing in a powerful debut novel.

You get 18 short stories here in a little over 200 pages. Knockemstiff is an actual town in Ohio, and the author grew up there: you can see a photo or two if you do a Google search. From the stories in the book, you wouldn't think that it could produce a Donald Pollock. The tales are terse, succinct, and portray an unrelentingly grim locale. There doesn't seem to be much hope for any of the residents, or much joy outside of misused prescription drugs, Bactine-sniffing, and booze. Knockemstiff isn't a place you'd like to live within 50 miles of.

The stories take place over many years, with flashbacks to the 1940's, and most of the people appear in more than one story. This has the benefit that even though a tale might introduce a new person or two, the other people and places are already very familiar. What will be unsettling for most readers will be the behavior and activies of the townspeople. Incest, rape, and murder occur at times, but an underlying sense of tension and violence is almost always present. If you like sweet tales of romance, you'd best try some other book: the closest thing here might be a story about a boy and his sister's doll. All in all, it's a grim place and life, and effectively narrated.

There are some other writers this book brings to mind. Cormac McCarthy's Child of God is, in a way, like a full-length novel about one of Knockemstiff's people. McCarthy's Outer Dark and The Orchard Keeper also come to mind. Another similar voice, not as well known as McCarthy, but who should not be missed, is William Gay. Gay's novels The Long Home, Provinces of Night (the title comes from a line in Child of God), and Twilight are excellent, and Gay's book of short stories I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down will remind you of Knockemstiff. Gay's writing is evocative and lyrical, and like Pollock, Gay came to writing late in life. Pollock seems to have a lot of the same talent that Gay does, and both have, no doubt, a lot of similar experiences with a deeply rural life. I think what I'd like to see next from Pollock would be a novel, a novel with Knockemstiff characters, ideally a novel like Gay's dark Long Home or Provinces of Night. Pollock's stories are such that you could see many of them developed into full-length novels: so this is a fine start for a promising writer.

I read Knockemstiff on an empty stomach and the room started spinning after the first story. When I finished the book I needed a double shot of Tang with a fish stick back. I swear I knew many of the characters from my 9th grade Metal Shop class. A couple of the rips I'd seen buying lids behind the stadium. This writing cuts to the quick and right across the throat. One of the best collections I've read since Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s, "Welcome to the Monkey House" or Richard Brautigan's, "Revenge of the Lawn".

Donald Ray Pollock has something to teach us all. He is a new master of the short story. "Knockemstiff" is dark, trashy, disturbing, and an indulgence for anyone who is reading it. From the most unusual sensory devices - smoking moldy hashish - to the most eloquent swearing, Donald Ray Pollock did better than I could have hoped for. I am excited for his next title.

Chuck's endorsement didn't hurt.

Knockemstiff is not for the faint of hearts, not at all. However, Pollock story telling, though maybe not the most elegant and beautiful prose, is raw, gritty, and just plain good. Every story instantly grips the reader and throws them into a whirlwind of pain, and struggle. God, I loved Knockemstiff.