Don Pollock's debut collection of short stories is named after, and set in, the (real) town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, where Pollock grew up.

It is a visceral, disturbing and at times hilarious book, but how much do the stories reflect life as it really is in the holler? James Smith asks the author.

The first thing to say is how much I loved Knockemstiff.  It is really wonderful to read such energetic and visceral prose.

I really appreciate the kind words about the book. The reception of the book has been better than I could have ever hoped for, especially when you consider some of the “gritty” situations and characters! 

It would have been easy for you to poke fun at your characters as low-life trailer trash, but you avoid this (you remind me of Annie Proulx in this sense). Moreover, the many funny lines in the book are never deployed at the expense of the characters. Was this intentional? 

I grew up around poor people, and as you probably know, there’s nothing funny about their situations. Too, I tried hard not to turn my characters into stereotypes or cartoons, mainly because I cared about them, even the really despicable ones. Writing about characters that you don’t like or at least have empathy for is going to turn out badly every time.

Though I cranked things up quite a bit by putting the violence and abuse and drugs and ugly sex front and center, I still tried to portray the characters with honesty and sympathy. As for the humor, I felt the stories needed it because, well, the book would be a real downer without it. In other words, I didn’t want the reader to feel like committing suicide.

There are some truly horrible characters in the book (Vern springs to mind), but it is the quieter ones—the ones whose plans have been thwarted—whose stories seem more moving: Big Bernie; Todd; Daniel . . .

I think that’s because I’ve always been a little obsessed with people who are trapped in situations or lives that they would like to escape or change. And so that came out in the stories, probably because I can identify so strongly with that feeling of being stuck. I mean, I worked in a paper mill for thirty-two years. It was a damn good job, a union job, but I spent years getting high and daydreaming about doing something else. People get trapped by different things: drugs, relationships, poverty, mental illness, alcohol, bad luck, families, the list goes on and on.   

You say in the book’s acknowledgements that you grew up in the holler, but that your family and neighbors were “good people who never hesitated to help someone in a time of need.”   This is a far cry from the fictional Knockemstiff, where almost everyone seems either out of control, drugged up, depressed—or a combination of all three. How come? 

There were a lot of good people in Knockemstiff when I was growing up there, but there were also some bad ones, and the troubled ones were the ones I always gravitated toward. I know it probably sounds unbelievable, but it was only after I finished the book that I realized that I’d only portrayed one side of the holler, the bad side. So the acknowledgment at the back was partly made to try and rectify this. Maybe in a future book, I’ll deal primarily with the good stuff, but still, a story needs some sort of “trouble” if it’s going to grab the reader.   

There is something very depressing about a dying town.  Are your stories making a political point about an increasingly marginalised and forgotten layer of American society? 

I hate the fact that America has become so generic. I mean, you travel to some other part of the country, a damn big country, too, and it all looks the same anymore because every place has the Target and the K-Mart and the Wal-Mart and the Burger King and all the rest of that junk. In other words, most sections of America are losing everything that made them unique or different. The big chains have destroyed the downtown businesses in Chillicothe, Ohio, the town where I live now. And it’s like that all over.

When I was growing up in Knockemstiff, a place with a population of maybe 500, we had three small general stores, a church, and a bar. Sure, it was a just a little village, but it did have its own myths, its own character. I knew everyone who lived there, and hell, I was probably related to a third of them. Today, though there are still quite a few people living there, the only thing left is the church. So with my fiction, I guess one of my aims is to preserve a little bit of that tiny, obscure place called Knockemstiff before it’s completely gone. 

You also seem to be saying that it’s very hard to get out of a town like Knockemstiff, even if you have the will to do so . . .

Sure, but it’s the same in Knockemstiff as it is for a lot of people, say, who grew up in a big city neighborhood. Lots of people, especially young people, dream of moving away to somewhere else, but end up staying near home. Actually, I’d say there are more who stay than ever leave, or at least that was the case before the present economy made it impossible for many people to stay in one place.

Growing up in Knockemstiff, I always dreamed of moving away and never coming back. Heck, in fact, I think a good part of my youth was spent wanting to be someone else. But then I quit high school and my father got me a decent job and I got married, and all of this happened in less than a year. I got comfortable with that life within a short time, or at least I tolerated it, and I finally gave up that dream of moving away. And a lot of people are more comfortable in familiar surroundings, even if those surroundings are terrible, than trying to break away and try some place new.  It’s just human nature, weak as it may sometimes be. 

How long did you work at the paper mill? What was that like? 

As I mentioned earlier, I worked at Mead Paper for thirty-two years. Compared to most factories, it was a great place to work. We were union, so there were good benefits and pay. I worked in the Boiler House the last eighteen years I was there, taking care of the ash silos (we burned coal for energy). It was a dirty job, but there was a lot of free time for reading, and I did a lot of that. They even had a program in which they would pay for 75% of your tuition if you wanted to go to college part-time. That’s how I got my AB in English from Ohio University. I quit drinking and drugging when I was in my thirties and needed something to fill up my time. I owe that place a lot. 

And how did this lead to Ohio State University? 

I received my AB when I was forty, but I didn’t do anything with it. Then, when I was forty-five, I went through a period where I was depressed about how my life had turned out, and I had a lot of regrets. I guess most people would call it a mid-life crisis. Anyway, I felt like a failure. I’d always had it in the back of my mind that I’d like to be a writer, and so I decided to try and learn how to write fiction. Looking back on it, I must have been pretty desperate! I told my wife I’d work at it for five years, and if nothing happened at the end of that time, then I’d give myself permission to quit.

But at the end of that time I’d published maybe five stories and I’d written enough to know I wanted to continue. A couple of those stories were published in The Journal, the literary magazine published by Ohio State University. Michelle Herman, the fiction editor and a professor there, encouraged me to apply to the MFA program and I eventually did. I was fifty when I got accepted. Let me tell you, quitting the paper mill in 2005 was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, but it’s turned out for the best so far. 

How do you feel about critics of creative writing courses, who say they are nothing more than "story factories”? 

I didn’t take any creative writing courses while pursuing my undergraduate degree, so I really only have experience with one MFA program. But I have to say that the professors at Ohio State University didn’t try to make you conform to their personal notions about how fiction should be written, or how a story should be constructed, etc. Several people have told me that my stuff would have been torn to pieces in the MFA workshops they attended, but at Ohio State I only received good advice and lots of encouragement.

It’s possible that part of that “story factory” criticism comes from the fact that a lot of short stories (but certainly not all) being written today do seem very similar, in that nothing much happens as far as action goes. I’d like to add that I don’t think a MFA program is necessary to become a good writer. It’s mostly just reading and writing. Make up a list of books to read, mostly the classics, and teach yourself to sit in the chair. 

How would you gauge the health (or otherwise) of the short story form in the US?  

God, how I wish short stories were as popular as they were sixty years ago. I could maybe make a living from this stuff!  Though I’m working on a novel now, I’d feel much more comfortable (and be having more fun!) writing another story collection. Part of that, I think, has to do with the quicker payoff, along with my somewhat limited experience in writing anything longer than twelve or thirteen pages. But though you can’t really make a living writing short stories, I think publishers are still putting out a lot of collections. Even when they know that they’re going to be lucky if they break even. Then, too, we have the collections like Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth and Strout’s Olive Kitterege that have been selling pretty well this year.

I’ve always wondered why, with the shorter attention spans and tighter time constraints that people have nowadays, why short stories haven’t become more popular in the last few years.  Maybe that’s just now beginning to happen. Let’s hope so. 

Do you have any recommendations for us? 

I’ve been pushing several collections recently: Kyle Minor’s In the Devil’s Territory (Dzanc will publish it later this year here in the states), Jason Brown’s Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work, Ron Rash’s Chemistry and Other Stories, and Keith Banner’s The Smallest People Alive. I’m not sure if these are/have been published in England, but they should be.

Q&A by James Smith, Story website editor

July 2008

Knockemstiff is published by Harvill Secker

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