Knockemstiff

I really like reading the the store reviews before I purchase a book so I don't waste my money, but I'm a little let down this time. There were so many good reviews for this book that I figured it must be really great.
Unfortunately, for me, it has not been.
I've read the first 4 or 5 stories and am not really impressed. The stories are kind of dark, and gruesome(which I normally like), but they don't have much to them. Maybe some people will like them for their face value ugliness, but I prefer something that makes me think a little, reflect a little, be astonished a little. Hopefully I can finish it, but I really feel like I wasted $12.
I wish the store had a section on people's review fields which showed their favorite books, so maybe you could get a gauge of what similar reading interest people think of books you might want to read. For instance, some of my favorite books are: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr., but I have not enjoyed this one by Donald Pollock.

Well done stories of life under the radar, living on the margins of America's society. Struggling with all the stuff everyone doesn't want to face up to and sweep under the rug in plain unadorned language that catches you by surprise. You can almost feel, taste, smell, and hear; and, if you close your eyes, see the characters as their life unfolds before you in brief vignettes loaded with pathos. Great reads!

Too much prurient material which seems very unlikely to have really happened. Simple writing style made it easy to read rapidly, and the plot kept moving quickly. None of the characters seemed very intelligent. This is basically a story of low-lives who have lots of perversions.

My parents grew up near Bainbridge, Ohio and knew most of the population of Knockemstiff. As a youngster my family often visited the area, if nothing else we made at least one autumn pilgrimage to see the autumn colors. To judge by Mr. Pollock's stories one would think that no half way decent human being ever was spawned from that locale. He writes of nothing but rape, robbery, murder, incest, drugs and alcohol. I have no doubt there is that side of things but the vast majority of those "Hillians" are decent, honest, hard working people, they are people who may not have much but are proud to say they earned whatever they have. I believe Mr. Pollock could stand looking out over those beautiful autumn colors and see nothing but dirt, rocks and copperhead snakes and he likewise sees the people as nothing but the most vile and degraded of creatures.

The term "utterly without redeeming social value" kept springing to mind as I labored through Pollock's collection of grim, crude, violent stories, written from a place in Ohio - and the author's soul - that should be napalmed off the face of the earth no later than tomorrow morning. I didn't grow up around Pollock's pathological hillbillies, rednecks and wasters, but I've known some of them over the years, and there is no beauty there, no redemption, no soul. Nothing but blind hatred of self, each other, and anyone stupid enough to be born black, female, queer or just different in any way, shape or form. I can feel pity for them, but that doesn't mean I want to spend my free time with them.

At least not the ones Pollack writes about.

There ARE good stories to be told about those people, but Pollock, in this foray, at least, is not the writer for the job. Pick up the works of Frank Bill, instead; the same scorched landscape, the same violence and grit, but - yeah, I'll say it - a redeeming drop of humanity and humor that makes knowing his characters worthwhile. I'm not saying I'll never revisit Pollock, but he's going to have to work awfully hard to win me back after Knockemstiff.

Jeez, I'm going to have to go read a romance novel or biography or something, now, just to wash Knockemstiff out of my memory.

If you're interested, Frank Bill's books are Donnybrook: A Novel and Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories.

Very poorly written book. A disjointed compilation of hardscrabble life in a dirt poor community. Lived it, Been there, done that. For a far better written accounting of that life, read "Standing on the Scratch Line" by Rick Bragg.

At first the folksy dialogue and country tales make it funny, gross, morbid but you want to read like listening to naughty gossip. Then it gets gross, kinda funny, morbid and disgusting. Then the humor disapears and it seems that in each chapter the author just want to show you how much more disgusting and dark he can be. You can only listen to "snot", "chew tobacco juice" and ways that men can disrespect women and their body parts, and other men, and how durnken fathers disrepect their kids and spouces before the book loses all its charm. If you don't want to listen to grosser and grosser tales then forget about this one.

Many are unable to relate to the "dirty reality" of Donald Ray Pollock. I, on the other hand, have known people who are 'capable' of extreme action under cultural circumstance that involves economic distress, intellectual disdain and a certain sense of lawlessness. Most of these stories are of course an imaginative extension of Pollock's superbly fertile powers of observation.

Inevitable comparisons will be drawn with other writers of the genre so I will dispense my opinions now and be done. Pollock is more violent by a hair, blows away the competition in terms of purely depraved behavior, his characters display less capability for regret, etc., etc., etc, You get the picture. My favorite realism short story writers are Richard Ford, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Raymond Carver. If we can qualify him, throw Tobias Wolff is there as well. Ford and Campbell are on another plane as writers, but Pollock is surprisingly good with the fundamentals of fiction. His stories know where they're headed, always well constructed, the dialogue perfectly timed and descriptive, the memory associations are a piece of perfection and he has an uncanny literary knack of letting the reader in on a plot that it still vacant in the mind of the protagonist.

To 'get' the messages (yes, there are a few) that Pollock hammers away at, it is essential that you connect in some small way to things that are rural. In America, that is a tall order as we enter our third century of culturally diverse and increasingly polarized lifestyles. Pollock remonstrates simply and uncompromisingly that this is what happened here, but he is referring much more to the attitudes and immorality that develop in natural course from the ranks of the disenfranchised.

His people are part real and imagined, folks that accept their disadvantages but are sensitive to condescension, and whose only safe refuge is the holler, that place, and, to some extent, time, of familiarity. They operate a day at a time in survival mode. No ambitions or outside curiosities can be allowed to interfere with this mindset. Remarkably, these attributes are consistent with the guileless acceptance inherent in rural religious cultures - that hard times are necessary in the struggle to reach the kingdom of heaven. Though unquestionably stamped on many of his immortalized characters, Pollock's defiance of this doctrine is what enables the clarity of his vision and pulls him ever closer to the true nature of the human struggle in Knockemstiff.

Though coarse and raw, these tales recount the emotional underpinnings of all human interaction: sexual naiveté and deviance, degradation, insecurity, vulnerability, depravity, loyalty, anxiety related violence and more. These stories tell the blatant, undisguised truth about the ways in which humans think and react to their ever varied environments. And because of that, Knockemstiff will ruffle most of the feathers that the guardians of so-called American values call sacred.

Again, I strongly emphasize that sometimes you have to make up a story to get at the truth. If the goal of a writer is to produce a believable reality of his experience, Donald Ray Pollack has announced to the elite class (and the rest of us) that this is the nature of life at ground zero. I really f------- love these stories.

This book is nothing more than a collection of short chapters detailing the lives of some pretty effed up people. Think middle America. Racist, chain smoking, alcohol soaked, physically and mentally disabled, drug addicted, masochistic pathetic souls. Doing nothing interesting. Just being their nasty selves. That's it.

No plot.

No story.

No central thread.

Just a bunch of disparate chapters that don't tie together.

This book is not page turner. It isn't clever. It is barely interesting. Overall, I wish I never read it.

That said, the writer shows some promise, despite some alarmingly loose writing throughout the book (unless it was by design). I actually purchased this book for two reasons -- I saw it described as gritty and violent (up my alley), and his second book was more highly recommended, so I figured I'd read the first book, well, first.

This book was bad enough that I might not even read that second book unless I have assurances that there is, you know, a story of some sort.

I am truly puzzled by all of the good reviews and can't help but think that the reviewers lived in that type of sad town and therefore related a great deal. Even if they related, I still can't help but wonder why they would think it's remotely interesting.

Whatever. I would not recommend this book to anyone other than someone who loves reading about folks that even trailer trash would look down upon.

This book is extremely graphic. The reviews I read described it as funny. I can't see how this is considered funny at all. Within the first few chapters there is incest, murder, and abuse. I made it 1/3 of the way into the book before I could no longer stomach any more of it.

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.

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.

Donald Ray Pollock’s “Knockemstiff” is a loosely connected collection of eighteen short stories that is guaranteed to leave you affected. How you’ll be affected is up to you and where your head is at. The characters in these well-written and absorbing stories are at once frightened, insecure, damaged, imperfect and sometimes downright destroyed. ‘Big’ Bernie Givens pretty much sums up life in and around Knockemstiff, Ohio in the story “I Start Over” when he says: “I’m beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.”

This is a dark, disturbing and depressing collection. The stories are brilliantly written and so vivid that you can almost smell the stale and bitter breath of the characters jumping off the page at you. Worse, as bleak and distressing as these stories are, and as vile and unlikeable as these characters are, you realize there’s a part of each one of these well-crafted characters hiding away somewhere inside you. If you never had anything to pray for before, read this book and you will.

Donald Ray Pollock, with “Knockemstiff” and his brilliant follow-up novel “The Devil All the Time”, is a must-read author. Pollock's not for everyone, but if you’re ready to explore - and maybe confront - those dark holes and realities in the world around you, and possibly within yourself, then he’s probably an author for you. Just be sure to keep some Mark Twain or maybe James Thurber around for a follow-up to help you get your head leveled again.

Just a final note: not that I particularly liked bologna to begin with but I don’t think I’ll look at a stick of the stuff again without a certain feeling of nausea after reading this collection.

You are one lucky bastard if you read KNOCKEMSTIFF before you read DEVIL ALL THE TIME. This is because you have a real diamond waiting for your next book. Donald Ray Pollock is a genius and he is one damn good writer who,as far as I am concerned, just does not write enough.

This is some real hardcore, rough, tough, gritty hillbilly slice of life where you have a front row seat to sit back and absorb, all from the safe distance. Best not to be too close. Can you even imagine what a "homemade convertible" driven by a guy with big fat sideburns looks like? That is an image hard to shake when you realize what the driver is doing to someone's mother on a bright Ohio afternoon. This is nit every stuff. Read KNOCKEMSTIFF and if you want more and maybe even better hillbilly bad boys and girls, serial killers and throw in some preachers. Read DEVIL ALL THE TIME and you will not miss a beat.

This book was definitely gritty and real. It didn't sugar coat anything about small town life. In fact, what is the opposite of sugar coat? Slime coat? It more or less slime coated every aspect of the town Knockemstiff, Ohio and its residents. Told in a series of loosely interlocking short stories, the novel emphasizes the worst parts of a person's life. Pollock has a talent for describing ugliness. Hot girl? She has a cold sore. Looking for a man to take home? His teeth are covered in yellow film. Riding in a car? The seats smell like bologna and vomit. Everything about this book and the people in it is ugly and sad, but Pollock does it really well.

That being said, I didn't particularly love this book. When I first started reading it, I really didn't like it even. As you move through the stories, you start to see that maybe there's some hope for these people. I'm not entirely sure if that's because the stories appearing later in the book span the late 90's, while the book started off in the 50's or 60's. Maybe the author intended for the readers to see that things have gotten better as time has gone on.

Few of the characters in this book are likeable. In fact, I can only think of one that I really sympathized with. Other than that, the characters tend to be depraved, addicted, or mean, but I guess that's the point of the book. Sometimes, the place makes the people, and Knockemstiff seems to suck people back in throughout their lives, no matter how hard they try to leave.

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

Critics say Polluck plays into stereotypes, but as someone from Appalachia, I would assert he writes what he knows. I would assert he disregards stereotypes completely. There is the good, the bad, and the ugly everywhere: choosing not to write about the good is not the same as choosing to play into hillbilly rhetoric. This book is worth your time. It has made every young Appalachian person I know who read it cry, because it reminded them of the difficult parts of their home area. Polluck is a writer for our time.

Powerful stuff here! The blackest of black humor leavened with sympathy for the human condition.

Pollock's dazed, doomed, deranged and damned characters huff Bactine and guzzle rotgut, are driven nuts by metal plates in their heads, suffer abusive parents or are abusive parents themselves, pump themselves full of killer steroids, crash cars, rob, rape, beat, get beaten, have heart attacks and strokes, and in general stagger, lost and confused and abused, through miserable ghastly dead-end lives in a bleak trashpit of a town that make the phrase "hell on earth" seem way understated.

This book is a great argument for gun rights -- realizing that people like this probably live just a short drive from any of us makes me glad to have firepower handy.

Strong and distinctive writing brings it all very, very alive. Each story is short and fast-reading and packs a punch -- there's not a loser in the bunch -- and the stories are connected by characters and place in a way that makes this almost as much a novel as a collection of stories.

Pollock reminds me somewhat of, to pick a few of my favorites, Bukowski, Harry Crews, Erkskine Caldwell and Eudora Welty, but he's an original voice who has carved out his own territory. Pollock has written one hell of a book and I hope he writes more.

Donald Ray Pollock has written a truly remarkable collection of stories. They are an unflinching look at the American underclass. You just "know" that none of these people vote; indeed, most would be lucky to know who the President of the United States is. Their hopes are severely constrained. Perhaps the most ambitious are those who want their son to win the `Mr. South Ohio' body building contest or manage to get out of town lured by a Texas oil field job. But most reserve their daily efforts to scoring a few more hits of meth, or even just a carton of cigarettes. High on the shortlist of criteria for girl friend selection is: "...and a monthly government check."

The stories are not "redemptive," and certainly lack the happy ending and pleasant prose that the, to date, 6 1-star reviewers seem to yearn for. And the book is all the more important for that reason - so few of the book-reading public has the knowledge and experience with this "other world" that is always so near, if we want to look. The stories are set in south central Ohio, but could also be placed here in Albuquerque, where the same people wash down Central Ave., the old Route 66, allegedly trying to get to California where their life will be different, or even more discouragingly, struggle "back East" when they found out it was not. Other reviewers have compared Pollock to other writers, some familiar, like McCarthy, some not, like Palahniuk. I'd like to suggest a couple others: Richard Ford, particularly his collection of short-stories on the underclass "out West," entitled "Rock Springs," and Jean Genet, both his "Notre Dame des Fleurs" and "The Thief's Journal."

As Genet did, Pollack has clearly rubbed shoulders with this underclass, which has given his dialogue an almost perfect pitch quality. Likewise, he has the ability to create a scene with the most succinct, authentic detail. For example: in the story entitled "Bactine," "... let alone seeing him at one of the reunions we used to have when our family was still permitted in the state parks." Or in "Rainy Sunday," "She crammed some empty pop cans and fast-food containers under the seat to make room for her feet." These two stories also illustrate a technique that some try, but Pollack has mastered: telling the same event from different perspectives. In "Bactine" two men are "hanging out" at the Crispie Cream at 3:00 am, and describe two women who have just entered. "Rainy Sunday" tells the same event from the women's point of view.

Much of the anguish in these stories is self-inflicted, but a few deal with what we will all face - the naturally occurring failings of the human body. Such is the case of Howard Bowman's Alzheimer's, described in the story "Honolulu," and his wife's valiant, but losing fight for him to retain his memory.

Overall, Pollock can evoke so much pathos in the reader over the "poverty of human existence" that it would be a strong one indeed who could finish the book in one setting. If there is a shortcoming to these stories it is only in the one that is missing - and could be readily remedied. Like Genet, how did Pollack do it? Of all the people who have inhabited this nether world, how is it that only a very few surface, and convey their insights to the rest of us? Now that story might be "redemptive," and I look forward to it.

KNOCKEMSTIFF

Not being a fan of short stories, I was hesitant to pick this one up; however, am I glad that I did! There are 18 short stories, most of them involving characters from previous stories, all of them rather inter-weaving. All of them take place in Knockemstiff, Ohio.

You can live anywhere in the world and there are people like these characters. Sad, white-trash, losers, hooked on dope and booze, dirty, sleazy, lazy, nasty people that you pray never would live next door to you or for that matter on the same block! These characters were so believeable and yes, scary, they seemed so hopeless and pathetic. Yet, these people do care about others and there is always the essense of the human touch. Some of them hate who they are and how they live and try and try to better themselves. Wow, these characters never ceased to amaze me! This is a quick read, very fast-paced and I was constantly surprised and shocked!

The writing is wonderful, the stories are wonderful. The book is different and not for people who shock easily or who take offense. If nasty sex and drugs and booze and dirty living conditions and grossness would upset you, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.

However, you should just go for it and read this great book; otherwise, you are certainly cheating yourself out of a terrific piece of writing.

This is a graphic book; I loved it. I will certainly recommed it to all of my friends!

Thank you!
Pam

Pollock doesn't hit the right notes in every story, but when he does, he does it better than Slash himself. Some of these stories vibrated through me like sound waves and still are as I'm writing these words. REAL LIFE, DISCIPLINE and I START OVER were among the best shorts I've read all year. I had issues whenever Pollock employed the grotesque too much, because it came to overshadow his style quite a bit and I think he's too talented to give in to things such as shock value, but not all of his stories verse in this. There's a lot to like about KNOCKEMSTIFF, but I think the best from Pollock is still to be expected.

The stories found In "Knockemstiff," Donald Ray Pollock's raw and powerful literary debut, are not for the faint of heart. Brutal and uncompromising, they capture the hardscrabble lives of the residents of Knockemstiff, Ohio - the very same town that Pollock comes from (although he cautiously points out in his acknowledgments that the actual residents of his hometown are really "good people who never hesitated to help someone in a time of need").

"My father showed me how to hurt a man one August night at the Torch Drive-in when I was seven years old. It was the only thing he was ever any good at." With these words Pollock opens his story collection, and over the next two hundred pages it doesn't get any prettier. In many cases, it only gets grittier and more difficult. Substance abuse, neglect, loneliness, dependency, abuse (of both spouses and children), betrayal, shocking outbursts of violence, and even murder are found in virtually every episode. Undoubtedly this has led to those unfair one star reviews that dismiss Pollock's work as depressing and unreadable. Those readers are justified to have that opinion, but I don't know how they could deny the power of his prose. Having lived a hardscrabble life himself, dropping out of high school, working at a meatpacking plant and a paper mill for thirty years and struggling through stints in rehab, Pollock writes with an authority and packs a punch that can only come with experience, making it quite difficult to believe that this is only his first collection. Truly, his talent was a major discovery.

Reading "Knockemstiff" is a mesmerizing, if unsettling, experience unlike any other I've had since I read Denis Johnson's superb Jesus' Son: Stories by. Sure, it isn't for everyone, but I don't see how anyone could put this book down after finishing the first story. Those of us with the stomach will thank Pollock for the ride when it's all over.

Also recommended to fans of Chuck Palahniuk's novels such as Choke.

Grade: A

This book was painful. And it was supposed to be. The down-and-out come out to play and the results are purely disastrous. Here we have the dregs of society who are trying to get by, but mainly failing miserably. Pollock asks us to consider our role in this whole mess, and turning a blind eye to these characters (whether in his book or in real life) *does* implicate us in the problem. Lest we forget it's fiction, it is NOT a 100% accurate depiction of the town (which I've visited before), but that's the point. Pollock could have set this book anywhere, but he doesn't owe it to anyone to write a biography of a town. And, to be sure, these people DO exist in Knockemstiff, just as much as they exist in all other parts of the country. Harmony Korine's gritty film Gummo set in Xenia, Ohio (but filmed in the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky) proves this fact. (Note that most of the people in his film are not actors, but rather people from the community that he simply included.) Our own American brand of underclass cur, come back to bite us in the as*. Not for the weak of heart, but 100% necessary for those who want to bear witness to all of humanity, even its gritty underworld.

In the spirit of Winesburg, Ohio (Modern Library Classics), Pollock brilliantly gives it his own modern day twist, akin to the writing of Hubert Selby, Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn (An Evergreen book), Aaron Michael Morales's Drowning Tucson, Aaron Gwyn's Dog on the Cross: Stories, and Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, these are the interlinked stories of people flailing in life's hardscrabble undercurrent. Read it to learn about a side of humanity that is easily ignored. Read it to see how humans are capable of unthinkable acts.

The book comprises eighteen stories, covering roughly a thirty-year period, from the late '60s through the '90s. Some characters reappear, a little older, a little more broken down, protagonist in one, supporting player in another, but the real star of Knockemstiff is Knockemstiff, a small, backwater town deep in the Ohio cuts, populated with pill-popping hillbillies, loose, murderous women, abusive fathers, dead-eyed girls and brain-addled boys, and all shades of wrong in between. At first glimpse, these inhabitants are simply an oddity, Knockemstiff, the town named after a fistfight, a fishbowl, where we, the reader, get to cup our clean, disinfected hands around the glass and peer inside at the weirdoes of a quirky otherworld; because there is no way its hideousness can affect us from our safe, removed distance. I mean, unless you're an inbred meth addict porking your sister in the Ozarks, how much could you possibly have in common with these people? As it turns out, a lot.
Read the rest of the review here:
[...]

Pollock's stories can be compared to those of Flannery O'Conor, Howard Frank Mosher, and William Gay, full of hard scrabble and flawed characters in an unforgiving environment. Not to mention the fact that any book titled KNOCKEMSTIFF has to be worth reading. Anyone who has lived in or near a small town down on its luck, with characters unable to escape their history, will appreciate Pollock's ability to capture those characters and their world.

... read this book start to stop nearly without putting it down. The stories are not thick and plodding - they are exact and solid: "...and stuck in southern Ohio like the smile on a dead clown's *ss." I was traveling home to Ohio at the same time; it feels like another world whenever I am there.

I think everywhere has places like Knockemstiff - where everyone starts with a clean slate - but it's almost written in the stars that they will be as bad or worse as the people around them just by staying and not being able to escape mentally or physically the pull of a dying town.

So many have reviewed this and added such great comments, I was reluctant to comment, but what's going on in this book is subtle at times, but no less genius. When a writer can make you pity, even relate to, a coward, a brute, and a loser, all in two paragraphs, then something special is going on. I'm one who doesn't see much humor here, mostly just the darkness dwelling in humanity and small communities like ours, but I think where people may see humor is that as bad as most folk may suffer in this book, you don't really see many entertain self pity, at least not for long, and they shrug off the horrible like a horse shakes off the horse fly, even though the horse knows it's coming back for another bite soon. As a writer myself from just over the hill from Knockemstiff who has yet to personally meet Donald Pollock though our books have set side by side in a local book store, I was stunned at the level of darkness that seeped through these pages. There are no monsters here, unless they are some of the people themselves, though many of them are more of the Frankenstein type, monsters that manage to evoke sympathy or at least understanding. Having frequented many of these same spots a generation after the author, I can attest to the accuracy he captures in regard to the fatal lives people in our area and other places like it can sometimes suffer. While these are all works of fiction, Publisher's Weekly said they had an aura of truth, and that they do. I was shocked when I tried to read aloud the final paragraphs of the last story to my wife and I nearly broke down. Reflecting on it, I have to chalk it up to great writing that tapped into my own hidden levels more than anything, but life here can be hard in many ways, and I felt as if he was opening up dark corners of my own life experiences that I thought nobody else could understand. I found it inspiring to see that someone else knew what complex, miserable loving relationships entailed, and how they managed to just keep going on long after everybody knew they were unhealthy and never getting any better.

The bad reviews here merely point out that many readers today really don't recognize good prose and powerful writing when they see it. Most college students can't even write a coherent paper today ( words of professors from Harvard, not mine), but the internet, texting revolution has cost the appreciation of true composition and storytelling. I found these stories to go by quickly, but the lives within are not milk and honey visions. Two reviewers even went on about how the book had disturbed them and revolted them, affected them more than anything they had read; how it seemed so real basically, that it bummed them out, then gave it one star ratings. Stephen King would kill for ravings like that, so would I. As an artist, to create an emotion in the reader is the ultimate accomplishment. News papers relate facts, writers tell stories, but great authors do all that and create emotion, as Donald Pollock has done here. "Wuthering Heights," "Gone With The Wind," "Schindler's List," and most anything Hemingway wrote were not sunshine happy tales, yet they illuminated the humor spirit in the light of suffering, suffering much deeper than most of us will ever endure. By watching them endure tragedy, our daily dramas become more manageable. There is a lot of redeeming values in this work if you're educated enough to build empathy for people you don't fully understand.

The language in this book is handled as well as Mark Twain dealt with dialogue from his neck of the woods, indeed with better effect than what Mark did with Huck Finn, which can get cumbersome. Here, Donald gives you just enough to hear the people in reality without bashing you over the head with constant profanity. What really should make you read this, is to see just how resilient the human spirit can be, to witness how much those born into poverty endure on a daily basis, and how people with everything against them just can't bring themselves to fully surrender to the darkness all around them. Yes Publisher's Weekly, having drank on a log at Haps Bar myself, this is the aura of truth you alluded to. Real or imagined people in Knockemstiff won't give up, even when they know they probably should.

Every artist that sticks his neck out like this always gets it from both ends, but time is usually the ultimate judge. I'd wager my kids will be reading this book in 16 years, and they had better get an A+ in that college course.

Though not quite as hard hitting as his novel "Devil All the Time", these short stories still carry some heft to them. They're enjoyable, and certainly well written, but near the end these characters begin to wear you down. How much brutal callousness can one small town hold? Well, according to this book, quite a lot.

Oh, I do recommend this collection. There are moments of greatness - I simply wish it didn't have to be drowning in despair.

This work could never have been wrought by an outsider--even one from just a few miles up Route 23, like me. KNOCKEMSTIFF is an unflinching tour of the plagues of Appalachian Ohio: obesity, tobacco, alcohol, violence, marijuana, poverty, narcotics, incest...etc. Of course, these plagues also exist everywhere else, including the heart of my own city, the capital of Ohio. Mr. Pollock paints both the lurid impulse and the pathos of his characters. He also shows their conscience: in at least three stories, ostensibly heedless males express concern for the children of desperately wayward women. To me, the eye of this hurricane is in the story "Assailants," where Del wants to kneel before his infant daughter in penance. Homie, you do Ohio proud.

This book of short stories will give you a clearer vision of the real dredges and losers of society not just those residing in Knockemstiff, even if you think you are more than familiar with that side of life. Moreover, if you want to learn the craft of short story writing at its best, you shouldn't miss reading it.

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).

This collection of short stories details the lives of the residents of the southern Ohio town of Knockemstiff. A working class region of Appalachia, each story details the life of one of the residents of Knockemstiff. What these people share is few opportunities, a world full of frustrated violence, and the hope-crushing realities of poverty. There's much that's depressing about Knockemstiff, Ohio. Characters with good hearts repeatedly find themselves trampled by others' greed and violence. Knockemstiff is a tough and lonely town, and yet, this is a collection of stories well worth reading. Pollock's characterizations are deep and complex. This is a world foreign to many of us, but one effectively created by Pollock.

Knockemstiff, a town in southern Ohio, is nothing more than a handful of houses and empty shacks. Being from 12 miles out, in what's called Meade in the book (Chillicothe in real life), I've heard the stories: brawls in public, the hookers waiting in their trailers for a knock at the door, bars that don't let women in even today, and just some really rough people. It's portrayed in the book as a collection of characters that are "stuck". Southern Ohio has a unique flavor in literature: it's down-home country but edgy, it's sad and heartbreaking yet somehow a hope and resilience shines through every character (I mean, they're still living, right?). The book spans in the 1960s through the 90s, giving the reader a sense of the "other-worldliness" that is living in a tiny town. Things don't change even when the night news says they have. The high school football team is still the center of the universe, the paper mill offers a steady job (so why would anyone leave to get more education?), and family is at the center of everything (whether that be a blessing or a curse). Knockemstiff is definitely a living setting in this collection of short stories: even the name of the town stands for either a fight or the homemade liquor famous from those parts. Knockemstiff holds its residents hostage, hugs them tight, and then throws them out.
There are many stereotypes about the culture of this region of Appalachia. Pollock personifies these stereotypes: incest, trailer trash, deadbeat non-educated, racist, homo-phobic, stuck in the past, shift-working, Frito-crunching, RC-drinking junkies. But he does so in a way that you know there's a glimmer of hope in each one of the characters.
Great book.

Knockemstiff goes there. It goes places that I never thought a book would, and places that will probably never be visited by a book again. Donald Ray Pollock takes his readers on a journey through the twisted lives of the inhabitants of Knockemstiff, Ohio. A journey they will never forget.

The first thing I liked about this book is that it was told in short stories. For someone with a short attention span like myself, this format worked wonders. There is plenty of action all throughout the book because with 18 stories, comes 18 climaxes. In addition, the short story format allows the reader to feel some accomplishment by allowing them to easily finish at least one story in each sitting. The subject matter of these stories was very much a surprise. If you've heard tales about this book being dirty or disturbing, you don't know the half of it. I was taken aback from the first few pages and never truly regained my footing. But I enjoyed by caught off-guard at the turn of every page. Just when I thought I had heard it all, Pollock pulled something else out of his bag of absurdity.

As crazy as things got, the laid back style of the author made it seem as if the outrageous events were normal happenings in that environment. This style rationalized the characters actions and allowed the reader to actually feel pity for them, despite their grotesqueness.

If you are looking for something different and a book that will make you have to pick up your jaw, Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock is the one for you. Puritans and prudes, stay away.

I first heard about this book and Mr. Pollock through a radio interview. I found Mr. Pollock's own personal life story and how he came to writing as interesting as this book.

Make no mistake, this is no FEEL GOOD collection of stories, this is a collection of short stories about how bad life can be and the poor, misguided and totally screwed up bastards that are living it. I hate to say it, but I have met and known people like this and Mr. Pollock's descriptive and penetrating prose breathes life into these stories and the poor souls that inhabit them and their shallow and depraved existence.

After I read this book, I wanted to read more by this soon to be great author.

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 one of the best books that I have ever read, period. These shocking stories follow right after each other, never giving the reader a chance to catch his or her breath. I read this entire novel in one sitting because I just did not want to stop. Knockemstiff is that good, well worth your money and time. The future is bright for Donald Ray Pollock. Pollock has joined my small list of favorite authors. A+ for Knockemstiff.

you know you should turn away, but you cannot. As strange a collection of human losers as ever seen. The author has obviously listened, because it soulds real. There's the rub. This will never be an attraction to visit.

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".

Depravity doesn't get top billing these days in the world of fiction. But that word fits Pollock's stories, gritty male-oriented fodder, a welcome relief from the dominance of fiction catering to female reader sensibilities. This is trailer trash descending a few notches you didn't think it had, and Pollock has managed not only elevate it to a high art, but has gotten much aclaim for doing so.

No question these stories are tightly written and keep pumping like a hypodermic needle that refuses to leave the vein. However, after I read a few, I was finding it difficult to distinguish them. As a "core" story, Pollock has hit a refreshing bullseye. But as a collection, they kind of miss the mark. Still, it's great to know that "out there' stuff like this is out there.

If you like short stories that wander around for three or four pages before getting your attention you should avoid Knockemstiff. Pollock hits you right between the eyes in the first paragraph and you move on from there, impossible not to finish one of his stories. These stories are gritty and grimy and extremely well crafted, telling of the lives and struggles of the characters of Knockemstiff, a real place although the characters are fictional. Pollock has a voice for sure and, hopefully, we will be hearing more of him.

I recently attended a book signing and reading of Knockemstiff at a Joseph Beth's Booksellers in Beachwood, Ohio. The novel itself is full of dark, macabe stories full of the hopelessness that traps so many people throughout their lives from which they will never escape. Despite the disturbing stories (brilliant and even surpassing Palahnuik in my opinion) Donald Ray Pollock couldn't have been a nicer, more down-to-earth guy. He was soft spoken, relaxed, and well mannered. Exactly the opposite of what you'd expect from someone telling such grim tales. A great guy with ton's of insight and a layed back personality.

Pollock's work is tremendously written. Yep, it's vulgar and gritty and, like others have said, it has to be taken in little snacks -- not all in one bite. But if you read it, you'll see a tremendously talented guy.

Some people have said it unfairly portrays this area of the country as a bunch of people without hope. Uh, it's fiction people ... drawn from experience, but still fiction.

Whatever you do, don't read Knockemstiff while you are eating dinner! The stories in this collection are raw and visceral, full of bodily secretions, garbage, and disgusting practices too numerous to mention. In short, amazing and finely crafted stuff. If Pollock writes a novel, it might just spontaneously combust! An impressive debut.

Pollock's prose is excellent and often laugh-out-loud funny, but he keeps telling the same story over and over. I have no problem reading about damaged people, but was there a single father in the town who was anything other than an alcoholic bully? Anyone who could get through the day without booze and pills? I kept waiting for that one story that would offer a modicum of redemption, but it never came. Someone compared Pollock to Larry Brown, but Brown's stories have a sliver of hope. All Pollock does is show us these sad souls and leave us to shake our heads.

Knockemstiff

I was initially interested in Donald Ray Pollock's linked story collection "Knockemstiff" because he's a local guy. I also knew that his professors and fellow students at Ohio State University think highly of his work. However, I was unprepared for its power. His stories are intense. Most of the characters are not likable, and the situations are disturbing. If you have any interest in fine storytelling, don't let those facts deter you. This one of the most compelling books I've read in a long time. Some have said they couldn't read it all in one sitting. I couldn't stop reading until I had finished every story. I believe all of the best writers show us the universal in the particular. Donald Ray Pollock does that with this collection. The people of Knockemstiff are everywhere.

Wow, I just discovered Pollock when I listened to the audiobook "The Devil All the Time" and was so captivated, I had to get this book. This is raw, gritty and vulgar in such a straight-in-your face delivery you can't look away. I hope he cranks out another book soon. This is literary candy for me. I want more!

Knockemstiff is a wonderfully entertaining novel. I just recently moved from Ohio to San Diego, so this novel brought back some great memories of the country folk...mainly my trashy in-laws. Donald does a great job following the lives of these strange back woods people over a great deal of time. It was a little bit confusing jumping around from one story to another, otherwise I would have given it 5 stars. Very well written and a pleasure to read... great job Donald!

Short stories are supposed to grab you in the first sentence and every one of them in this collection does that....and then some. I went back over sentences and paragraphs in these stories marveling at the writing. The stories are compeling, raw and unsettling;every one of them satisfying. When there is foreboding, it is subtle yet sets the reader on edge. The stories speak to a specific region, a specific class of people, and yet you suspect you might have met people like them without knowing their story. When done, you read the book a second time, it is that good. Obviously Doubleday thought so, too. I look forward to the publication of Mr. Pollock's first novel, no matter what the topic.
Vicki Stoddard
Columbus, Ohio