Knockemstiff

Knockemstiff is a 2008 short story collection by American author Donald Ray Pollock. Loosely based on the author’s own life in the town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, the linked stories portray a community riven by violence, drug addiction, and sexual abuse. A former paper-mill worker and a recovering alcoholic, Pollock came to writing late in life. Knockemstiff, his debut, has been praised as “bleakly, unsettlingly funny—and touching…Pollock grabs by the throat and doesn’t let go” (Kirkus Reviews).

Every story in the collection takes place in Knockemstiff, a southern Ohio holler named after a historic fistfight between two women (the town preacher heard one of them say she was going to knock the other stiff). A run-down knot of “shotgun houses and rust-streaked trailers,” the town stinks of the sulfur generated by the paper mill. The stories’ chronology wanders around between the 1960s and 1990s, tracing the town’s decline: the store and the bar, Hap’s, both close. Eventually, even the church has “fallen on hard times.” The inhabitants of Knockemstiff are virtually all drug addicts and petty criminals. Inbreeding is rife; medical needs go unaddressed.

The collection’s opening story, “Real Life,” introduces a central preoccupation: that violence begins at home. At a drive-in movie, an angry father starts a fight with another dad, coercing his shy son into fighting with his opponent’s son. That night, the boy lies awake, licking the blood from his knuckles and craving more violence. In a thematically-linked story, “Discipline,” an ex-bodybuilder gives his son a lethal dose of steroids.



In “Giganthomachy,” two boys set fire to an anthill. Both are escaping problems at home. One knows his father is beating his mother. The other has been given a task by his mother: to draw tattoos on his arms and surprise her in bed with a kitchen knife, pretending to be a serial killer: “Just spit on the floor, maybe,” she says. “Hurt me, but don’t really hurt me.”

In “Blessed,” a petty burglar is injured falling from a roof. Taking OxyContin for the pain, he slides into addiction. Finally, he learns that his deaf-mute son is not deaf-mute at all: he just pretends to be when his father is there. “I realized I was in the middle of one of those moments in life where great things are possible if a person is willing to make the right choice.”

“I Start Over” follows a thug named Bernie Vickers as he cruises town looking for underage girls. When he encounters some teenagers making fun of his mentally disabled son in a Dairy Queen, he risks life and limb to beat the teenagers senseless. In “Assailants,” another troubling protagonist defends his disabled wife when a store clerk calls her “totally gross.” In “The Fish Stick Girl,” drug addict Del “dates” a mentally disabled woman.



Another recurring subject is small-town hopelessness and the dream of escape. An unnamed young man narrates the title story. As the story opens, he is watching a late-night Charlie Chan movie on TV. He imagines all the other Ohioans watching it with him. He works at a local store and lives in a trailer behind it. The next day, he is accosted by a photographer from California. She is making a series about small-town life, and she wants to take his portrait. Later, the narrator learns that the woman he loves, Tina, is about to leave for Texas with a dangerous man called Boo. He decides not to declare his feelings for her, because he cannot give her the life she wants: “I’ve lived here all my life, like a toadstool stuck to a rotten log, never even wanting to go into town if I can keep from it.” He agrees to the photographer’s request. She photographs him in front of the “Welcome to Knockemstiff” sign—with Tina.

In “Hair’s Fate,” teenager Daniel is caught having sex with his sister’s doll. As a punishment, his father cuts off his long hair with a butcher’s knife. Daniel decides to run away. Hitchhiking, he is picked up by a trucker named “Cowboy Roy” who takes him to his country ranch. There, Roy pushes Daniel to wear a wig belonging to Roy’s deceased mother. Daniel realizes what Roy is going to do to him, and he surrenders to his fate.

The collection’s central character is Bobby Lowe, the protagonist of three stories. In the first, he is a boy, hearing his father tell his friends that he “shoulda been born a girl.” In the second, “Pills,” Bobby and his friend Frankie rob a local drug dealer to fund an escape to California. Instead of escaping, they pick up a drug-addicted prostitute and exchange all the pills for sex. Finally, while Frankie cooks a long-dead chicken over a tire fire, Bobby gazes up at a plane, wondering whether its occupants can see the fire. The collection returns to Bobby in its final story, “The Fights.” Now a middle-aged man, Bobby is battling to stay sober. The story’s ending strikes an optimistic note.