Knockemstiff

Knockemstiff is an anthology with 18 stories by the American author Donald Ray Pollock linked to each other about the common setting , published in 2008 by the US publisher Doubleday Books and in 2013 in a translation by Peter Torberg by the Munich Liebeskind Verlag ,

The stories are biographical narratives that all take place in Knockemstiff , Ohio , where the author was born. The book is described by some reviewers as "night black Americana literature" and placed in a series with novels by authors such as Pete Dexter or Daniel Woodrell , which have also been published in German by Liebeskind Verlag. Comparisons are also made to works by Cormac McCarthy and Sherwood Anderson .

General and formal structure

The book consists of 18 individual short stories, each consisting of a short chapter. The individual stories are told from changing perspectives, either from the role of an authorial narrator or from the first-person perspective of the protagonists. In many of the stories, inner monologues and thoughts also play a role, which are reproduced without the corresponding quotation marks .

The book bears the dedication “For Patsy” on the cover sheet. The stories were preceded by a quote from the American author Dawn Powell :

"All Americans are originally from Ohio, if only briefly."

- Dawn Powell

In addition, there is a drawn map of the place Knockemstiff and the surrounding area, in which the individual houses of the place and other locations of the stories are drawn.

content

overview

The title of the book Knockemstiff is also the name of the setting for all stories and the title of a story. The storylines take place in this place and the surrounding area and take place over several decades between the 1960s and 1990s. The blurb of the German-language version already gives some hints about the summarizing elements of the book and describes the place Knockemstiff as “a dreary town in the vast emptiness of the Midwest”, where you meet “outsiders” who are “torn back and forth between longing and lost hope, between rebellion and senseless violence ”. The stories portray individuals or groups of people, usually failed people from the lower social classes. Almost all stories focus on drugs, sex and violence, which determine the life of the people described. Another central theme is the escape from Knockemstiff and the social milieu, which the protagonists never manage.

There is no framework plot, but the first and last stories form a framework around the collection; both are about the relationship between the narrator Bobby and his father. Other stories are linked directly through its protagonists, such as pills and Schott's Bridge over Frankie, fish fingers and attackers on Del Murrey and fish fingers girl Geraldine and Bactine and Rainy Sunday over Jimmie and Sharon. Other people are mentioned in several stories, including Jake Lowry in Dynamite Hole and Knockemstiff and Wanda Wipers in Pills and Valley . The topic is also unifying: All stories are about violent or abused people and drugs.

The stories

Intersection in Knockemstiff, Ohio

The real life ( real life ): The first-person narrator Bobby describes an evening when, at the age of seven, he went to the drive- in cinema with his parents to see a Godzilla movie. His violent father gets drunk on whiskey from the ashtray and takes on a pee break with a man he brutally beats up. When his son wants to beat up Bobby, he defends himself and knocks him down too. He will never forget the praise his father received for it. The story ends with Bobby lying in bed, sucking and chewing his fingers, tasting the other boy's sweet, salty blood.
Dynamite Hole ( Dynamite Hole ): Jake Lowry has lived in a trailer in the forest since his desertion in World War II and a stay in a mental hospital. He describes how one day he observed the boy Truman Mackay and his little sister playing a sex game in a water hole. Excited and in a blackout, he kills the boy and rapes the little girl before strangling her. Then he hides both corpses in a cave under water. The flow of the narrative is interrupted by other memories after each paragraph, such as how he is searched for by two soldiers after his desertion, whom he lures into a snake-infested valley after a long pursuit. One soldier is attacked and dies, the other flees.
Knockemstiff ( Knockemstiff ): The narrator has been working as a temporary salesman in Maude's Store since he was sixteen and after the death of his father and lives in a trailer behind the shop. He opens the shop every day and always has the same daily routine. On the day he reports, Tina Elliot, with whom he is in love, wants to leave the place with her new boyfriend Boo. Jake Lowry comes into the store and trades arrowheads for something to eat; shortly afterwards a couple with a car from California appears at the gas pump. The woman is a photographer and wants to document the place Knockemstiff as a curiosity for a book - she persuades the narrator to pose for her at the place name sign when Boo and Tina drive up. Tina stands by him and describes the situation as "the last opportunity to have my picture taken with a stupid hillbilly."
With skin and hair ( Hair's Fate ): Daniel is caught by his father masturbating with his little sister Lucy's doll . As a punishment, he cuts his hair with a kitchen knife. He decides to flee and is taken by a truck driver while hitchhiking . The driver tells him his story and gives him alcohol and speed , after which he takes him to his trailer in Idaho and gives him a wig from his late mother. The story ends openly when the truck driver takes David by the hand and describes it as a living doll.
Pills ( pills ): First-person narrator Bobby and his friend Frankie decide to run away from Knockemstiff in his 69 Dodge Super Bee. They are petty criminals who steal what they can get. They want to finance the tour through the sale of so-called black beauties, amphetamine pills that they steal from the bartender Wanda Wipers. You swallow the pills yourself and drive around but stay in the area. Little by little, their plan dies. On the trip they run over a chicken that Bobby wants to revive and therefore packs in the trunk. They have hours of sex with a prostitute named Teabottom, who they pay for with pills. In the end Frankie tries to fry the dead chicken over a burning tire and eats it undercooked.
Gigantomachy ( Giganthomachy ): Together with the neighbor boy William, who is regularly beaten up by his father, the first-person narrator Teddy wants to destroy an ant nest with a burning plastic bottle. They get into a dispute over whether they will take on the role of soldiers in the Vietnam War and destroy the nest with " napalm " or bring destruction as gods. They are disturbed by William's sister, and after an argument at home, William returns to his father. At the same time, the narrator describes his mother's habit, according to which he regularly plays a psycho killer in the evening and has to kill her in this role.
Schott's Bridge ( Schott's Bridge ): 17-year-old Todd Russell inherits $ 2,000 after the death of his grandmother to start a new life away from Knockemstiff. Todd, who keeps his homosexuality a secret, is considered effeminate in the place and is treated accordingly. Instead of leaving, he moves with Frankie Johnson into an old fishing hut, where the two of them live on the little money Todd can earn and spend most of the time consuming drugs and beer. Frankie, whose face was destroyed in an accident, tells Todd about an old woman he has occasional sex with and who supplies him with rotten food. He also speaks to Todd about his homosexuality. Frankie feels provoked by Todd while intoxicated with rotten Lebanese Red ; he knocks him down, rapes him and disappears with the hidden money.
Fat sack ( lard ): 16-year-old Duane Myers is urged by his father to finally have sex for the first time and is so pressured that he fakes it in the back seat of the car with the help of fruit wine and his sister's panties and gets the girl Maple McAdams for it thinks up. He meets up with his friends in the garage who are throwing darts at McComi's belly and smoking weed. He tells them about the sex and impresses them. McComis, who is in love with a cover picture of Nancy Sinatra and always carries it with him, asks Duane if he would trade his Maple for Nancy.
Fish sticks ( Fish Sticks ): Del Murrey is in a laundromat with his girlfriend, the fish finger girl. The girl lives in a mental hospital and got her nickname because she always has rotten fish fingers with her in her handbag, which she offers others to eat. Del remembers his late friend Randy, a bodybuilder and fan of Charles Atlas , with whom he moved to Florida in the hippie days. Once there, Randy prostitutes himself to a hot dog seller, whom they later kill and rob. Years later, Randy, now Mr. South Ohio , died in a heart clinic by lighting his bed with a cigarette. While Del reflecting on his former friend, he asks the fish fingers girls him at the laundromat to blow . Then he gets a fish finger and eats it.
Bactins ( Bactins ): Together with his cousin Jimmie, the first-person narrator sniffs Bactine and then wants to meet a friend at Crispie Creme who should sell them Seconal suppositories. The narrator emphasizes that he wants to quit the Bactine because it will hallucinate him. While they wait, two fat women come into the store, and Jinnie wants to bring the younger of the two to them to "fuck her brain out". The narrator, whose teeth were knocked out years ago, prevents him from doing so. You leave the restaurant and sniff Bactine in a parking lot.
Discipline ( Discipline ): Luther Colburn, an aging bodybuilder and gym owner, wants his son Sammy to be Mr. South Ohio and regularly injects him with steroids such as the anabolic steroid Deca-Durabolin to help build muscle and forcing him to exercise. He is in competition with his adversary Willard Lowe and his son Bobby. On the way back from a shopping trip they see Bobby Low posing on the main street, where he is admired by passers-by. Once at home, Colburn forces his son to train again. Shortly afterwards he discovers that Sammy had injected himself with the entire anabolic steroids ration and did not show up for training. Instead, he and Bobby Lowe posted on Hauptstrasse at −7 ° C and suffered a fatal heart attack. A few weeks later, Luther comes back to the same place and post naked at -37 ° C until he collapses too.
Attackers ( Assailants ): Del Murray is married to Geraldine, a former fish finger girl ; the two have a child. Since Geraldine was attacked, she has not dared to leave the house; Del is regularly drunk on Angel Dust or Xanax . After he was high again for a day, he should take care of his daughter Veena in the evening. When she fell asleep, however, he sneaks out of the house to get some beer from the Quickshop. There he flirts with the saleswoman, who, however, gossips about his wife. Shortly afterwards, he returns with a paper bag over his head and scares her, causing her to fall off the chair and bump her head.
Rainy Sunday ( Rainy Sunday ): The corpulent Sharon lives with her husband, who has had a steel plate in his head since a serious accident and regularly goes crazy when it rains. On a rainy evening, her aunt Joan asks her to go out with her to find a husband again. At Crispie Creme they meet Jimmie and take him with them. Jimmie fondles Sharon in the back seat, sniffing Bactine. The two women add sleeping pills to Whiskey. After Jimmie falls asleep, Sharon leaves the car and goes back to her husband.
Sink ( holler ): The first-person narrator lives in a sexual relationship with Sandy and at the same time takes care of her paraplegic father Albert, whom he regularly feeds with wine, washes and diapers. He takes the painkillers himself because Albert's wife Mary does not want to give them to him. She herself dreams of traveling the world, but does not leave home. One winter evening, the narrator goes to the pub Haps with Sandy, where Sandy is towed away by a lumberjack. When he comes back, he finds that Albert has passed away. He decides to leave the house and gets into an old abandoned car, a '66 Chrysler Newsport known as Owl's car , on the outskirts of the village.

background

The author Donald Ray Pollock was born in Knockemstiff, Ohio, and grew up in the area. The place itself is now deserted. The name “Knockemstiff” can be freely translated as “Beat them dead!”. In his stories, Pollock does not describe autobiographical events but rather fictional stories, but he places them in the place and in the wasteland of his homeland. The stories take place in the second half of the 20th century, with some relating to the Vietnam War and other events of the 1960s.

Pollock wrote the short story Bactine when he was 45 and submitted it for publication in The Journal , the literary magazine of the Ohio State University's English Literature Department . One of the editors was so impressed with the story that in 2005 she persuaded Pollock to attend the university's creative writing program . Bactine later became part of Knockemstiff , Pollock's debut book. When it appeared, Pollock was already 54 years old. In Germany, before Knockemstiff, the novel Das Handwerk des Teufels , which Pollock wrote later and was awarded the German Crime Prize in 2013 , was published.

reception

United States

In the United States, Knockemstiff has been featured in the New York Times , Associated Press , Los Angeles Times , USA Today , Wall Street Journal , Esquire, and The Hopkins Review , among others .

Jonathan Miles describes Knockemstiff in the New York Times as “the main preoccupation with petty crime, where female-beating bullys drink booze from ashtrays, and bored teenagers spend their weekend evenings throwing darts at a fat kid to make up for Let the bong draw. ”He relates the place and the work to Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson : Both concentrate on the lonely, depraved and outcast people who Anderson call" twisted apples "and Pollock's" toadstools stuck in a rot. " lock ". The main difference between the two, however, lies in the social structure: While the social structure in Winesburg is carried by other characters such as doctors and other people, there is no such construct in Knockemstiff between "drug addicts, refugees, squatters, rapists and aspiring child molesters". In addition to violence, crime and drugs, Miles also focuses on the role of fathers and draws parallels to the work of Pat Conroy and Chuck Palahniuk .

In his review of Pollock's reading at the Texas Book Festival, David Duhr counts both Knockemstiff and the novel The Devil All the Time "among the most disturbing and at the same time most entertaining books" that he has read in recent years. In The Hopkins Review, Dale Keiger compares the life story of Pollock with a “readymade” and quotes his manager, who speaks of a “hidden genius”. In his view, however , the Knockemstiff stories do not have the substance of the works of authors such as Raymond Carver , Flannery O'Connor or Cormac McCarthy , to whom Pollock has been compared.

German-speaking area

Christian Buß called the work on Spiegel Online Kultur a “hillbilly masterpiece” and a “furious story book”. He describes the place Knockemstiff as “Heimatkaff in nowhere of Ohio” and sums it up: “Nobody gets out of Knockemstiff” and relates this to Pollock and his life story. He puts the drugs and violence consumed in the stories, as well as the thought of escape, in the foreground as the connecting elements of all stories: “The drugs change from story to story, but the violence remains the same, it changes from father to son, from Inherited from mother to daughter. In Pollock's stories, speed , crystal meth , some kind of sniffing gas, but also painkillers or Seconal suppositories, which are actually used for cancer therapy, are consumed. The characters are always broad, always ready for anything. Except for work. ”In addition, he emphasizes sex and violence in its various forms as valves:“ Where the language center of these speed freaks is blocked, sex and violence become common forms of expression. Pollock describes inbreeding, drive removal from play dolls and prostitution in the lowest currency area (a speed capsule against one-time sexual intercourse). In one story, a boy has to hold a knife to his mother's throat in the bedroom so that she can act out her masochistic fantasies. ”However, Buß points out that Pollock's stories and characters are“ free of all lust and brutality ”and“ with laconic psychological features Accuracy ”describes without slipping into cheap“ hardboiled folklore ”and thus answers“ to misery with aesthetics ”. Pollock creates "beautiful sick literature as an answer to the unpleasant sick world out there" and thus a way of surviving in it.

Frank Schäfer compares Knockemstiff in the daily newspaper (taz) with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio , which he describes as the "eternal classic of the novel made of stories". In his opinion, the book with Knockemstiff is opposed to a "cheap fusel-soaked hillbilly version turned through the meat grinder". In comparison, Knockemstiff is “a Dantesque pandemonium in which one can only let go of all hope. Although they all long for a better life that they know from the television, there is hardly a way out of this hole ... an educational, violent, polymorphically depraved white trash nest. "Schäfer makes comparisons with the works of Cormac McCarthy , which resulted from the "harshness of his prose and the occasional metaphysical dangling, the strife of his battered protagonists with the benevolent creator god or their pagan reinterpretations of the world of things into hosts and signs of blessing". “But while McCarthy and Sherwood Anderson keep contrasting the simplicity and naturalness in their prose with clearly more expressive passages, Pollock remains true to his bone-dry, emaciated, completely imageless style. As if he didn't want to allow himself or us any excuses. "

Jan Wiele from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) describes Pollock's stories as “the perfect American short story” that “knocks you out of your shoes” and also focuses on the aspect of violence in his review. In his opinion, Pollock keeps his "no-nonsense style {...} masterfully to the last page". With the language of boxing, he ties in directly to the last story of the book: “Every punch fits, and that means something with the multitude of swingers and hooks that the author hands out to his characters in their respective hard-knock lives. “He too takes up the drug abuse of the protagonists and the hopelessness in the place that he describes with Bruce Springsteen as a“ town full of losers ”, and the comparison with Anderson is not lacking. He sums it up by calling the book a “monotony of hopelessness” which, in its laconic severity, sometimes even overshadows Charles Bukowski . According to Christoph Schröder in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Knockemstiff tells of a "worldly hell full of filth, incest and violence". He relates this to the “day in the life of the average knockemaster” and writes: “Where there are no contrasts, the horror loses its force. Pollock counters this danger by allowing a few characters, almost imperceptibly, brief moments of emotional impulses. "

Christian Schachinger interviewed Pollock as part of a book presentation in Vienna for Der Standard and wrote that, thanks to Knockemstiff, he is not only firmly in the tradition of leading American noir authors such as Erskine Caldwell , William Faulkner , Cormac McCarthy or Flannery O'Connor , but also "As a completely independent, very precise observer of his surroundings" is perceived. He quotes Pollock: “I cannot say that the province gives birth to monsters or that so-called backwoodsmen are more violent or vicious than people who live in the city. It's just that people who are not particularly well educated and who live in rural seclusion experience a certain sense of hopelessness that may make them uncontrollably more aggressive. The internet and television may have made things a little less dramatic today, but my two books are also set when I was a young man, in the 1960s and 1970s. "

expenditure

Knockemstiff. Doubleday Books, New York 2008.
- Knockemstiff. (German by Peter Torberg ), Liebeskind, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-95438-014-5 .
- Knockemstiff. (German by Peter Torberg , paperback), Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-453-67678-7 .

supporting documents

^ Knockemstiff at Doubleday Books.
^ Knockemstiff at Liebeskind Verlag.
^ Knockemstiff at Heyne Verlag / Random House.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Christian Buß: Hillbilly masterpiece "Knockemstiff": Fear is our engine. Spiegel online Kultur, July 10, 2013; Retrieved July 19, 2015.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Frank Schäfer: The true life. Die Tageszeitung, July 27, 2013; Retrieved July 19, 2015.
^ Charles McGrath: Writer Remains Literary Voice of Knockemstiff. The New York Times, July 11, 2011; Retrieved July 25, 2015.
↑ Dark tales populate 'Knockemstiff' The Augusta Chronicle (via Associated Press), May 16, 2008; Retrieved August 4, 2015.
↑ Eric Fortune: From Winesburg, Ohio to Knockemstiff. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
↑ Christian Buß: Pollock's "Craft of the Devil": In God's slaughterhouse. Spiegel online Kultur, April 2, 2012; Retrieved July 25, 2015.
^ ^A ^b ^c Jonathan Miles: Winosburg, Ohio . The New York Times, March 23, 2008; Retrieved July 25, 2015.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Dale Keiger: Knockemstiff (review) The Hopkins Review, 3 (2), 2010; Pp. 288-291; Summary; Retrieved July 25, 2015.
↑ "where the dominant occupation Seems to be petty crime, where wife-beating louts drink Old Grand-Dad out of car ashtrays and where restless teenage boys giving Their weekend nights throwing darts at the fat kid and compensating him with bong hits." Quoted from Jonathan Miles: Winosburg, Ohio . The New York Times, March 23, 2008; Retrieved July 25, 2015.
^ David Duhr: BOOK FESTIVAL: Soft-Spoken Tough Guys. Texas Observer, October 22, 2011; Retrieved July 25, 2015.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Jan Wiele: Two thousand dollars in a coffee can and yet no luck. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 28, 2013; Retrieved July 26, 2015.
^ ^A ^b Christoph Schröder: Self-evident law of the thumb. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 15, 2013; Retrieved July 26, 2015.
^ ^A ^b Christian Schachinger: US author Pollock: Life does not end well. Der Standard, September 19, 2013; Retrieved July 26, 2015.

[Doubleday-1] Knockemstiff at Doubleday Books.

[Liebeskind-2] Knockemstiff at Liebeskind Verlag.

[Random_House-3] Knockemstiff at Heyne Verlag / Random House.

[Buß_2013-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Christian Buß: Hillbilly masterpiece "Knockemstiff": Fear is our engine. Spiegel online Kultur, July 10, 2013; Retrieved July 19, 2015.

[Schäfer_2013-5] Frank Schäfer: The true life. Die Tageszeitung, July 27, 2013; Retrieved July 19, 2015.

[NYT_2011-6] Charles McGrath: Writer Remains Literary Voice of Knockemstiff. The New York Times, July 11, 2011; Retrieved July 25, 2015.

[Augusta_Chronicle-7] Dark tales populate 'Knockemstiff' The Augusta Chronicle (via Associated Press), May 16, 2008; Retrieved August 4, 2015.

[Fortune-8] Eric Fortune: From Winesburg, Ohio to Knockemstiff. Retrieved June 16, 2015.

[Buß_2012-9] Christian Buß: Pollock's "Craft of the Devil": In God's slaughterhouse. Spiegel online Kultur, April 2, 2012; Retrieved July 25, 2015.

[NYT_2008-10] A ^b ^c Jonathan Miles: Winosburg, Ohio . The New York Times, March 23, 2008; Retrieved July 25, 2015.

[Hopkins_Review-11] Dale Keiger: Knockemstiff (review) The Hopkins Review, 3 (2), 2010; Pp. 288-291; Summary; Retrieved July 25, 2015.

[12] "where the dominant occupation Seems to be petty crime, where wife-beating louts drink Old Grand-Dad out of car ashtrays and where restless teenage boys giving Their weekend nights throwing darts at the fat kid and compensating him with bong hits." Quoted from Jonathan Miles: Winosburg, Ohio . The New York Times, March 23, 2008; Retrieved July 25, 2015.

[Texas_Observer-13] David Duhr: BOOK FESTIVAL: Soft-Spoken Tough Guys. Texas Observer, October 22, 2011; Retrieved July 25, 2015.

[Wiele_2013-14] Jan Wiele: Two thousand dollars in a coffee can and yet no luck. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 28, 2013; Retrieved July 26, 2015.

[Schröder_2013-15] A ^b Christoph Schröder: Self-evident law of the thumb. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 15, 2013; Retrieved July 26, 2015.

[Schachinger_2013-16] A ^b Christian Schachinger: US author Pollock: Life does not end well. Der Standard, September 19, 2013; Retrieved July 26, 2015.