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Knockemstiff is a collection of short stories set in the holler of the same name in southern Ohio where I grew up. I tried to link the stories together through the place and some recurring characters.

Donald Ray Pollock

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Donald Ray Pollock
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Knockemstiff
Ohio
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Stories
Southern
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Tried
Holler
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Recurring
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Ohio
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One of the reasons I write about religion is due to my own envy of people who truly feel the presence of god in their lives, good souls who believe devoutly in a supreme being and an afterlife.
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I think my characters - well, at least a few of them - are hoping or searching for some kind of contact with god.
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I don't really think the outburst is recent there have always been writers in Appalachia.
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I remember a class I taught at Ohio State where I assigned a Mary Gaitskill story, which really wasn't that bad, and I had this one girl refuse to read it. But better that reaction than no reaction at all.
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I've always liked reading books that contain funny lines or situations, and maybe because my work is known chiefly for its violence and misery, I made a more conscious attempt with The Heavenly Table to do that myself.
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I've never heard of that anthology [Vance Randolph, Pissing in the Snow], but you can be sure I'll buy it now.
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When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.
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I don't think my book is any more shocking than if I went out right now and brought back your local newspaper and found a story that happened around here yesterday or the day before that's just as shocking as anything in my book.
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J.R. Angelella is a truly gifted writer. Zombie is one of the smartest, strangest, and most beautifully crafted coming-of-age stories you will ever encounter.
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I took a correspondence course with a guy at Ohio University. He gave me ten exercises, and one of them resulted in the story Bactine. It pleased me a lot more than anything else I'd ever done, so I kept messing around and by the time I got to Ohio State I'd written maybe eight stories.
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I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.
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I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.
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I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.
Donald Ray Pollock
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You're always hoping you can attract a bigger audience, but at the same time, I'd hate to give up what I write. If I could write Chick Lit or something like that and make money off it, that'd be great. But I just can't do it.
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Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.
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I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].
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Look, girls don't care how many push-ups you can do. They just want to get high and wear flowers in their hair. Maybe steal a car.
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I think some people at Doubleday worried about that a bit when Knockemstiff came out, but, with the exception of one or two people who complained that I didn't do justice to the many good people who lived in the holler, most of the local objections have been aimed at the violence and foul language.
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A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.
Donald Ray Pollock