Country: USA
Genre: Literary
Pages: 203
Order KNOCKEMSTIFF here
Before he moved in next door, I though only old people got headaches. He was always getting me to steal some of my mom's aspirins for him, and then he sucked on then like hard candy, trying to make each one last as long as possible. Living with my mother was no picnic, but compares to what William and his sister, Lucy, had to go through , I was, as my uncle Clarence always put it, shittin' in high cotton.
Donald Ray Pollock isn't a southern writer in the purest sense of the term. Because he's from the midwest, first and also, because he's hard to pigeonhole and that's exactly what makes him such a charming and interesting cat. Like Chuck Palahniuk (who blurbed this collection, by the way), his range of subjects is simply too diverse to pin to a single genre, despite that his stories are firmly anchored into the rural midwest, in this particular case, the city of Knockemstiff, Ohio, where Pollock was born. KNOCKEMSTIFF tells the story of what it feels like to live in small town American midwest. Seen through Pollock's eyes, the quiet, simple life becomes a mythological playground where you're never sure who's the monster and who's the hero. I was confused more than once about what was Pollock's intent when telling a story, but never did I finish a story not entertained.
I don't know if this is official publishing strategy, but it's not the first time I read a short story collection where the first story knocks it out of the park. Hard. Harder than most stories in the book. REAL LIFE is absolutely splendid. It's the story of a coward and his son and Pollock exposes what cowardice is and how it affects and shapes people around you over time. It's narrated from the son's perspective and it's harrowing. It's one of the very good, haunting stories I've read this year. DISCIPLINE also was spectacular, for completely different reasons. In that one, where a father shoots his son full of steroids, Pollock examines the destructive power of the ego. How far can a distorted perception of one's life can affect another's. Donald Ray Pollock knows exactly what he wants to do with this story, and it shows as all the variables are carefully chosen, including the heartbreaking father-son relationship. When Pollock hits the right notes, he hits them right out of the park.
There were some points that confused me, more than anything. Pollock makes use of the grotesque a lot throughout his story and I couldn't figure out why. Was it comedic? Ironic? Does it express something about rural Ohio that I can't understand unless I live there? Was it shock value? Because if it was about that, it's disappointing because Pollock is way too talented a writer to require shock to draw interest. A misfit character blowing another and having it all over his face when done is stomach-turning for sure, but it doesn't do much for me. I don't knock grotesque as a literary trope, but it must be used with caution and for a very good purpose. Palahniuk has a masterful showing of grotesque in his legendary short story GUTS. I'm as humorless of a reader as you can get. If it's not written on the cover that I'm supposed to laugh, I probably won't. You can call this a pet peeve of mine.
I had the only true weight gym in southern Ohio, no women, no aerobics, no Nautilus shit. But since it was damn near impossible to find any decent bodybuilders around here, I had to rely on fat-ass powerlifters or the occasional football player to keep the place open. It used to be a gas station, and Sammy and I slept in the back. On rainy nights the fumes rising out of the oil-stained cement smelled like dinosaur blood.
Pollock's use of grotesque is an issue I had with the book, but goddamn, is this guy talented or what? He is both talented, thorough and incredibly hard working. All his short stories are so polished and mastered and have such a deep understanding of what they were trying to say, I didn't see much of the usual stuff that bothers me with short stories. No empty descriptions or evident, mandatory ending twist. None of that. Donald Ray Pollock has a superb, almost Bruce-Lee-like instinct for narrative development. His stories are tight, finite objects and they all complement each other. Some were stronger, especially towards the end. Stories like I START OVER and BLESSED will crawl up to your and wrap around your spine although they have a more classic, noir-ish feeling to it.
KNOCKEMSTIFF didn't won me over as a standalone work of art, but it sold me Donald Ray Pollock something fierce. Consider me a fan. Knowing all the ruckus his novel THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME created, I'll make sure to pick it up and let you know how I feel about it. It's always tempting for a reviewer to show the same objectivity and inflexibility as if you were reviewing Jonathan Franzen, but truth is, KNOCKEMSTIFF is Donald Ray Pollock's first publication and it's pretty damn phenomenal for a short story collection. There are what I think are missteps that I can't quite rationalize, but it's not as much the display of hard storytelling as it is the display of potential that struck me. Short stories are great for that. They allow you a margin of error, because every ten or fifteen pages, you start all over. By the time I finished KNOCKEMSTIFF, I had forgiven Donald Ray Pollock for making me gag for no reason around page eighty. Sky is the limit for this author.
THREE STARS
