Knockemstiff

Knockemstiff

3.89 of 5 stars 3.89  ·  rating details  ·  2,686 ratings  ·  559 reviews
In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published March 18th 2008 by Doubleday
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Stephen
Here's a Life Coaching tip:

If you're given the choice between living in Knockemstiff, Ohio, or having your naughty bits gnawed to shreds by a ravenous honey badger
honeybadger
…the correct selection is B.

This is my first experience with Donald Ray Pollock experience, and I'm already a devout admirer of his talent as a storyteller. This is terrific stuff...but, ho doggie, can this man write himself into your happy zone and shit bleak all over it. Seriously, Knockemstiff is unrelentingly grim. The setting, t...more
Steve aka Sckenda
Sep 28, 2012 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those needing to escape suburbia
Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by: richard derus; stephanie
“When you first heard him talking about it, you’d figure he was bat-crazy, but really, he was just trying to latch on to something that would fill up his days so he didn’t have to think about what a mess he had made of everything. It’s the same for most of us; forgetting our lives might be the best we’ll ever do.” (155)

Welcome to the underbelly of America. As a former prosecutor and a public defender, I have had a front row seat from which to view how the professional underclass in America lives...more
Richard
This review has been revised and can be found at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.
Dan Schwent
Knockemstiff is a collection of 18 short stories set in Knockemstiff, Ohio.

Reviewing a book of short stories is a tricky business, especially if you haven't been reviewing them as you go. Furthermore, I'm not a huge short story fan so I don't read collections unless one comes along that will knock my pants off and sell them to the highest bidder before I get a chance to put them back on. Knockemstiff is that short story collection.

Eighteen stories of redneckery most foul are contained in this bo...more
Kemper
I don’t know if I should consider this redneck noir or hick lit, but I like it.

Per his bio, Donald Ray Pollock actually grew up in a tiny town called Knockemstiff in southern Ohio, and he spent over thirty years working in a paper mill. It shows in the collection of short stories that are such authentic and gritty portrayals of rural poverty that you’ll feel like you just moved into a double wide with only a garbage bag full of dirty clothes and a case of warm Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Each one of these...more
Trudi

I'm going to start this review with a humble caveat -- there's no way I can do these stories (or Pollock's writing) any sense of justice. But if I can get you to pause whatever it is you're doing, if I can get you to put down whatever else you happen to be reading, for just a moment to think about this book then I will be a very happy woman indeed.

What can I say? Knockemstiff knocked me flat on my ass. The interconnected stories are an assault on the psyche - a kind of brutalization lined with...more
karen

...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

i'm pretty sure i can't say anything better to sum up the collection, so for once, i am going to keep it short. very enjoyable short stories - occasionally gratuitous, not as good as The Devil All the Time, but still tremendous.

some things deserve the short-and-sweet treatment.
Jacob
January 2011

All the ugly parts of humanity are crowded into a single town--and all of those ugly parts trying to escape. They rarely do. Donald Ray Pollock's first (and hopefully not last) collection of stories is thuggish and brutal; reading it, however, is a delicate act. If you try to speed through Knockemstiff in a few days, like I did the first time I read it back in spring 2008, you may have to fight back the urge to curl up on the bathroom floor and not talk to anyone for about a week. On...more
Stephanie
If you are feeling kind of crappy, like your life sucks and it couldn't get any worse, pick up a copy of Knockemstiff and give it a read. Soon you will be saying to yourself "Hmmm, well at least I'm not a crackhead, huffer, morbidly obesse whore, alcoholic or steroid user........I just can't stand my boss". (unless you are any of those things......my apologies.)

"I woke up thinking I'd pissed the bed again, but it was just the sticky spot from where Sandy and Me fucked the night before. Those kin...more
Lou
Stories set mostly in Knockemstiff and some centred round A Paper mill where the author used to work. I have just completed recently reading his very good first novel The Devil All the Time which had some memorable characters and a brutal plot. With the novel being the first work of his I have read my expectations where risen high on the beginning of reading these short stories in his writing prose and they fell short in satisfying my appetite for his work slightly. These short stories do have m...more
Laura
"As my parents' bed thumped loudly against the floor in the next room, I lapped the blood off my knuckles. The dried flakes dissolved in my mouth, turning my spit to syrup. Even after I'd swallowed all the blood, I kept licking my hands. I tore at the skin with my teeth. I wanted more. I would always want more."

So ends "Real Life," the first story in Donald Ray Pollock's knockout of a debut. It seems that every review I've read uses two phrases to describe this collection: "pulls no punches" and...more
Jeniffer Almonte
Countless times while reading this (stunningly well-written) book, I had to put it down to read something that was less depressing. Since I am simultaneously reading "Year of Wonders", which is a novel about how the Bubonic plague devastated a small English 17th century town, it became the case that yes, reading about that deadly epidemic was a welcome escape from the bleak existence of these unlucky folks in Southern Ohio.

Donald Ray Pollock has an incredible gift for telling the dark and seari...more
Bill  Kerwin

I grew up in Cincinnati, and whenever I read Raymond Carver, all the characters seem to speak to me with an Appalachian accent. Wrong of course, but it feels right to me.

Here comes Pollock's "Knockemstiff," set in the hopeless oxycontin hollers of Southern Ohio, and now those Carver-like characters of Appalachia have a fine writer who knows how to give them voice.

Half the stories (the first fourth of the book and the last fourth) are very fine indeed. and the others--although they often seem sel...more
Maciek
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.
-Donald Ray Pollock, Real Life

Knockemstiff is a real place. It's a small town in southern Ohio, where Donald Ray Pollock grew up. The place supposedly owes its name to a preacher's advice: when a woman came to him and confessed her suspicions that her husband was cheating on her, he is told to have replied "knock'em stiff". An image search will sh...more
Kevin
Yep. I'll put it on my all-time faves list. Donald Ray seems to be working on a much higher, much riskier level than any other new writer out there. This set of slightly-connected stories (they all take place in Knockemstiff, Ohio) is so constantly great that I couldn't help but shake my head. Some people I've talked with about this book have suggested it's too brutal for them to read in long stretches but I found that Pollack's bleak narratives were often spiced up with enough strange details a...more
Troy
Don't get me wrong; the writing is good, and the acts of the characters are unapologetic and seem to be basic fucntions of their personalities. But I simply cannot read the inner thoughts of a segment of the population that would sooner call me nigger and blame me for their lot rather than the very fact they're stuck in a dead-end life. I'm not emotionallly involved in the book, and started to actualy root for them to screw each other's life up.

Others have remarked how touching the book was; I s...more
Bill
I'm glad it's over.

Knockemstiff is Donald Ray Pollock's first publication, comprising of
several vignettes of the residents of Knockemstiff, Ohio. This is a sad
place, populated by what can only be described as white trash hillbillies.

Drug use is rampant, as is deviant sexuality, and while I am in no way
a prude or naive in the ways of various intoxicants, by the time I
finished this collection I couldn't take any more. The best thing about
this reading experience was being able to put it down and ap...more
Jeff
Pollock is an immensely talented writer and "Knockemstiff" is a shocking, brutal, fascinating look at people who are both damaged and damaging living in a place that is also both damaged and damaging. At each turn, the interconnected stories in this book brim with uglinesss, seething with a tension that often erupts into violence. However, every story, no matter how seemingly savage, is laced with heartbreak and tenderness.
G
Apr 13, 2008 G rated it 3 of 5 stars
Recommended to G by: Jeffrey
Gritty, dirty, nasty tales. Well-woven and all connected stories about a place called Knockemstiff. Not every story holds up, but most feel as satisfying as a punch in the gut and as soul-quenching as lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Tom
May 08, 2013 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: ohioana
This book took me a while to get into. Many of the early stories featured strange and depraved characters, and the people were pathetic. However, as the collection progresses the characters become more interesting and pathetic melts into empathetic. The last story, which connects with the first, brings things to an interesting close. I am curious to know when each chapter was written and how they were arranged to see whether this was the author steadily learning his craft or just a coincidence.

G...more
Goose
Though I don't read many short story collections, I have enjoyed some by Jayne Anne Phillips, Tobias Wolff, and Perry Glasser in the past. I had no intention of reading this collection but picked it up one day and WHAMMMMM!!!! These stories are a visceral, literary punch to the stomach. The characters are sad mostly lonely losers. Many seem to be searching for a bit of hope and looking for change, but they lack the intiative to create change themselves. Though these people seem a bit bleak they...more
Zerbe
Like Sherwood Anderson's classic Winesburg, Ohio on speedballs comes Donald Ray Pollock's Knockemstiff. Told from the viewpoints of a variety of hopeless, fuck-ups from the little town of Knockemstiff, Ohio through the years, this novel is a truly (and wonderfully) brutal piece of work.

Each story builds upon those before it in theme, character and story itself. People show up again and again, their problems doubling and tripling, the path of destitution continuing to spiral downward. As it nears...more
Gregory Baird
May 15, 2008 Gregory Baird rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Chuck Palahniuk or Denis Johnson
“Forgetting our lives might be the best we’ll ever do."

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...more
Dianne
Tough, gritty, appalling, not for the squeamish - and one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. I've been to the "hollers" in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania so these stories don't shock me. Disturb me, yes, but not shock.

Pollack's writing is magnificent. His characters lead lives so empty, so desperate that they say "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"
or
"he was just trying to latch on to somethin...more
Kilean
Probably best not to read these straight through. Maybe take a break between stories and go pick a flower, spin some Yanni. This stuff is smelly and mean. And yes, it does seem like a lot of short story writers have an easy time depicting brutal people doing nasty things to one another and the world at large, and a lot of those same writers have no interest in originality. Not so with this writer. It's like he's got an extra gear – e.g. not only is the hash a couple of dudes are smoking causing...more
Bill
This is a well written book, but the subject matter makes me feel like I need to shower while drowning my sorrows in whiskey. I mean this book is bleak! (And this coming from a dark, bitter, jaded street cop.) Nothing good happens to any of the characters in this book but the writing is good and, sadly, the book may be entirely plausible. Incest, dope, booze, domestic violence, sexual assault, murder,...this is the feel good hit of the summer. As much as this collection of ugly snapshots is unpl...more
Cecilia
OK, all the reviewers raved over this bleak, depressing hopeless book. I suppose if you have never lived or worked in a socio-economically repressed area, you would think this is a realistic book. The reality is that in almost all communities there are both hopeless and hopeful people and stories. This was just some seriously dramatized and silly, like J.T. Leroy books.
Zach Chasnoff
I haven't really read a book like this before. Knockemstiff is about a small town, the author's home, im rural Ohio. A collection of short stories about the tragic characters that inhabit Knockemstiff, there is interplay between the stories that gives the book the overall feeling of a novel. Each story is not only very well written, using a subtle sort of vernacular but, also jarring in a grotesque and not so subtle way. Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, explains, she had to go for a walk aft...more
Lori
I can't begin to say enough good about this book, so I won't try. The only thing wrong with this book is that I had trouble trying to write while I was reading it, because his stories were in my head instead of my own.

These are dark stories. Looking for a pick-me-up? Go somewhere else. Looking for happy endings and life lessons? Somewhere else. But if you're tired of fiction about people whose problems don't seem all that problematic, maybe you're ready for the sad lives of the people of Knockem...more
wally
2nd from pollock for me...the other his novel, a story i marked as a favorite and could be 2-stars is not fair...or maybe the "it was ok" fits...as i did not, really really, like it.

and why was that? i think i was looking for something that resembled regret in this chronicle that celebrates illegal drug usage, badly mishandled humans, and despair. there was even a point where i thought, man, in a few years, when obama's death-councils get cranking, these people are the first to go. heh! that was...more
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Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff. He dropped out of high school at seventeen to work in a meatpacking plant, and then spent thirty-two years employed in a paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio. He graduated from the MFA program at Ohio State University in 2009, and still lives in Chillicothe with his wife, Patsy. His first book, Knockemstif...more
More about Donald Ray Pollock...
The Devil All the Time Hair's Fate / Knockemstiff (Storycuts) Blessed / The Fights (Storycuts) Holler / I Start Over (Storycuts) Assailants / Discipline / Honolulu (Storycuts)

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“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.” 23 people liked it
“When you first heard him talking about it, you'd figure he was batshit crazy, but really, he was just trying to fill up his days so he didn't have to think about what a fucking mess he had made of everything. It's the same for most of us; forgetting our lives might be the best we'll ever do.” 13 people liked it
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