Review: "Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is my kind of writer. He is that right mix of hard-edged storytelling that rips through its narrative like an armor-piercing bullet, but also makes you think more deeply about your own surroundings, and unlocks your ability to see magic in the normal, and sometimes darker parts of humanity. This debut collection, Knockemstiff, is a very different book than Pollock’s novel, which came out this year, The Devil All the Time. It is more subdued than that wild tale of mayhem and murder, although a drop or two of blood gets spilled. This book is a lot more like a grimier, dirtier version of another classic of literature of place, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. With the same passion and empathy that Anderson had, albeit with a bloody chip on his shoulder and beer in his gut, Pollock describes what kind of lives people lead in the smaller-than-small town of Knockemstiff, Ohio. A lot of these stories can be very funny, and Pollock has a great ear for dialogue that really catches on the way Lansdale’s stories do. But a lot of the times, these stories are very sad, chronicling people where it is simply beyond their means, both physically and mentally, to ever leave this town. They were born here, and it will eventually swallow them up, along with they’re potential and hopes for escape. A lot of people feel this way about their hometown (although I kind of like Indianapolis) so it is easy to care about these characters, and find it harder on them when they make drastic inevitable mistakes. Most of the stories here are winners and none of them fell flat or had me rushing past the ten or twenty pages to get it over with. A few that stood out among the pack would be the first story “Real Life”, in which a boy’s father introduces him to violence with a cowardly act of cruelty at a drive-in movie theater. It is a harsh way to start, and sets the stage for what kind of landscape Pollock builds for the reader. “Lard” is the sad story of the lengths a teenage boy goes through to convince his father that he has had sex, and another story about dangerous parenting, “Discipline”, where a father pushes his son past his limitations in order to win a bodybuilding competition. But the best story in this collection might be the least harsh, but probably the saddest. The title story tells the story of a man who is working at a small general store, who will probably end up doing that forever. The women he loves, who has never had interest in him, is leaving town for bigger things with a mean boyfriend, and an out of town couple is collecting photos of towns like Knockemstiff. These thing converge at the general store, creating a beautiful moment in this man’s life that is so brief it might as well have never had happened. It ends on a high note though, one, which gives this simple, man a little bit of power and happiness that is real and profound. An excellent collection that deserves a place next to books like Winesburg, Ohio, and proof of Pollock’s greatness.

Rating: 5/5