Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock5/8/2023 Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place. The characters, who regularly brawled, drank to oblivion and assaulted. With an artistic instinct honed on the works of Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews, Pollock offers a powerful work of fiction in the classic American vein. Pollock's first book, published in 2008, was a critically acclaimed collection of 18 short stories set in Knockemstiff. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the reader with inexorable force. Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved but irresistibly, undeniably real. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |