You can become a valuable part of the WOSU Public Media family with your gift today. Your generosity will help positively impact the arts, education, and citizenship of the communities we serve.
"Knockemstiff" Looks at 'Real Life' in a Southern Ohio Town WOSU Book Critic Kassie Rose reviews "Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock.
by Kassie Rose
Knockemstiff is a town in southern Ohio. It's also the title of a new collection of short stories by Donald Ray Pollock.
WOSU book critic Kassie Rose says the collection is impressively real, in this review:
There are some strangely named places in the United States. Consider Zap, North Dakota, and Toad Suck, Arkansas. In Ohio, we have Knockemstiff.
It's located southwest of Chillicothe, and it's the subject of a new collection of short stories written by a talented first-time author, Donald Ray Pollock.
Pollock grew up in Knockemstiff, which he describes in the book as a "holler surrounded by hills."
The 18 stories carry simple titles, such as "Pills" and "Lard" and "Bactine." They're interconnected, so characters from one story will appear in another.
There's also a map in the front of the book illustrating the locations of these characters' houses, Hap's bar, Maude's store and the church. The map bears a striking resemblance to Sherwood Anderson's map in his classic Winesburg, Ohio.
Along with the maps, the two books share another similarity – the theme of confinement in small town Ohio.
Knockemstiff is a much more sordid translation of that theme with the unsavory residents marking their days with drugs, beer, sex and violence.
They are so deeply mired in depravity it's become their way of life — ranging from brutal rape and murder in the story "Dynamite Hole;" to fistfights at the drive-in movie in the story "Real Life;" to stealing drugs that will finance an escape to California in the story "Pills."
That escape never happens.
Frankie and Bobby, who steal 240 Black Beauties, end up instead gorging on them for a week.
Their laziness is typical – the residents of Knockemstiff dream about leaving town but can't or don't.
Mary, in a story called "Holler," is always pretending a trip somewhere from her Triple A guidebooks. She puts a rock on her daughter's bed and says it's from the Grand Canyon. The daughter knows it came from the driveway.
These residents just can't see their way to a better life — even when it's handed to them.
In the story "Schott's Bridge," the character Todd inherits $2,000 but he buries it behind the camp where he lives with Frankie. Frankie steals the money after sodomizing Todd and smashing his face with his work boot.
I didn't have much sympathy for these two let alone many of the other residents of Knockemstiff but sympathy isn't Pollock's intent rather authenticity. He writes with an incredibly vivid voice, rich in "hick" dialect and attitude, and spiced with the levity of dark humor.
Most of the stories end in grim acceptance — there are few epiphanies — and because of that, some days, I didn't want to read the stories.
Just when I would think the Knockemstiff life couldn't get any more vile, it would get worse.
But therein is the very authenticity that makes Pollock's collection undeniably successful.
The renowned author Joyce Carol Oates has written that one of the little-understood responsibilities of the artist is to bear witness.
Donald Ray Pollock has done just that for a way of life rarely acknowledged, and he's done it superbly.
"Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock is published by Doubleday.
WOSU Book Critic Kassie Rose can be heard Mondays at 12:35pm during NPR's "Day To Day" on WOSU 820.
