Knockemstiff, Ohio is a real place – a place in what is known as the “hollers”. Backwards, somewhat isolated, mostly poor – a place where lives are lived and sometimes lost in a manner vastly different from lives lived in the big cities.. The residents of Knockemstiff that we meet in these stories have few prospects for success, and little hope of escape.
Donald Ray Pollock uses Knockemstiff as a setting for telling some of the weirdest and most disturbing stories you will ever encounter. Knockemstiff is a collection of short stories, with some characters that wind in and out of one story and another. When you have finished the first story, “Real Life”, you will probably lean back, feel a need to think about what you have just read, try to sort out your thoughts. Perhaps, like me, you think “well, at least if can’t get any worse that this”, or something along those lines.
If you do, then, like me, you are very, very wrong. The next story, “Dynamite Hole” is even worse. So much worse, in fact, that it can perhaps best be described as appalling. It truly is. And overall, the stories are just that: appalling. Ugly. They tell tales – about events, situations, people – that are all beyond our worst nightmares, and then some.
The stories are extremely tough to read. I was unable to handle more than two of these gritty and often depraved stories in a row. Mostly I only read one. After having read one or two stories, I focused on something else for a while, before returning to the next grueling tale.
What made me return to the book again and again was – I think – the writing of Donald Ray Pollock. His style feels like a kind of direct, to the point, low key reporting. I don’t know if the stories he tells are “true” or whether the people and circumstances he describes are close to “real”, but somehow he makes me believe they are. I read all the eighteen stories, and at the end of it all, I have to say that in addition to all the other things I feel and think about them, I also like and am fascinated by them. While reading I felt miraculously transferred into that alternate universe that may be Knockemstiff or just the “hollers” in general. And while it felt strange, it also felt oddly satisfying to visit. Or perhaps to know that it only was a visit, no more.
The language is colorful, the descriptions held in a subdued and understated form that belies the evil of the narrative -the overall effect is very evocative of time and place. Knockemstiff is a book I highly recommend, strange, exotic, mesmerizing, and oddly entertaining.
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