He graduated from the MFA program at Ohio State University in 2009, and. 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. Urn:oclc:829994936 Republisher_date 20170104190214 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 571 Scandate 20170104032439 Scanner . Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 17:42:24.20504 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA1146913 Boxid_2 CH129925 City New York Edition 1st ed. 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. 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. Donald Ray Pollock is an astonishing new voice in. 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. Knockemstiff is the world of Vernon God Little by a writer who depicts poor America like no other.

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 by Donald Ray Pollock