One of the most reliable tipoffs to the fact of a writer’s not being of high quality is when he is overpraised, and overpraised in a way that stresses nothing of a literary nature, usually by a published writer who lacks any skills of his own. Such was reinforced to me upon reading the new collection of short stories by first time writer Donald Ray Pollock, Knockemstiff.
Now, wait a minute, you say. Isn’t it true that agents and editors always bemoan the fact that the publishing world is so ‘competitive,’ especially in regards to there being no market for short fiction? Of course, all of this goes out the window when a writer gets a blurb from a known writer; in this case, the hack’s hack, (Up)Chuck Palahniuk, the man who brought you that literary marvel, Fight Club. The Chuckster effuses on the dust jacket: ‘Donald Ray Pollock gives us the impossible - fast, funny stories about the saddest people you’ll ever meet in fiction ... more engaging than any new fiction in years.’
Need I really state that none of this is true? Let me give some more gushings. From the New York Times, whose review’s title is Winosburg, Ohio; a play off of Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg Ohio, save for the fact that Anderson was a very good writer, while Pollock is an anonymous MFA hack with little talent:
But whereas Anderson tucked the grotesque beneath the staid and steady public lives of his characters, doctors and other professional types among them, Pollock’s characters — addicts, runaways, squatters, rapists, aspiring molesters, many of them one signature away from internment in “the group home” — wear their grotesqueness high up on their sleeves. If Winesburg’s social constructs held the unutterable hungers of its citizenry in check, however loosely, in “Knockemstiff” there are no such constructs.
In fact, like most wannabe ‘realistic’ fiction, the only way Pollock can grasp at reality is by painting the lowest common denominator as the norm. Almost everyone is a sex, alcohol, or drug addict, and almost all of them are illiterate or semi-literate. The shadow of Raymond Carver is so huge in Pollock, yet so utterly shadow with none of the man, that the fact that so many critics go out of their way to claim Pollock is not like Carver is a dead giveaway that he is a talentless aper of the dead storyteller. The Dayton Daily News writes:
In Pollock's fanciful imagination, this hardscrabble swath of Appalachia in south central Ohio is gritty and nasty and downright terrifying. His version of Knockemstiff is peopled by losers. Druggies, grifters, rapists, thieves, perverts, killers - every manner of dead-end situation ricochets across these pages with the lethal force of flaming cars skittering toward that looming abutment. No happy endings should be expected.
These stories detonate. Pollock's readers become horrified spectators of tragedy and disaster. We are mortified by the violence yet, strangely thrilled. There is that sense of being a voyeur observing repulsive but fascinating behavior. Pollock writes with incendiary verbal pyromania.
Well, no. The stories are so dull precisely because they are so utterly predictable. There is violence, stupidity, no introspection, and no real dialogue between characters - yes, even the working class debates real issues that affect them. They are not fascinating because the characters are not complex. Watching a retard suck his toe is not fascinating - gross; but dull, not fascinating.
Article comments
1 - Doghouse Reilly
You make a few good points. A fat guy sinking into his seat "like a setting sun" doesn'tv make a whole lot of sense (although it's technically a simile, not a cliche). And a lot of the stories do have those typical "non-ending" endings that so many short stories seem to have, that leave the reader somewhat less than satisfied.
I enjoyed the book, personally, and thought your assessments were off on several of the "tales," as you call them in about every every other sentence. For example, the whole point of "Hair's Fate" is that the reader can spot the mounting danger signs as Daniel hithces along with Cowboy Roy, but Daniel, a naive small-town runaway, can't spot them himself. "Fish Sticks" isn'tv so much about a crazy girl "carrying fish sticks about" (if you're not British, don'tv say "about" when you mean "around", it's like wearing a sign: POMPOUS!). It's more about Del, one of the few who actually do make it out of Knockemstiff, along with his cousin Randy, whose funeral is tomorrow, and it turns out Del has a hand in Randy's death. "Assailants" is about still having a few shreds of pride: even though Del has nothing to be proud of, he doesn'tv like the girl in the convenience store mocking Geraldine, not knowing Del is married to her. And did you miss the sinister undertones in "Rainy Sunday?" And why wouldn'tv a reader want to find out why Aunt Joan just has to go to town at 1:00 in the morning. You complain how the characters don't discuss issues or have internal dialogue, but there are few things I hate more than a writer who has to have his characters, no matter how ignorant they are, quote Socrates, listen to classical music or have a secret passion for Shakespeare, when the reader knows damn well they wouldn't do those things.
Speaking of bad writing though, you seriously need to shorten up those sentences. You're the king of the meandering run-on. Look at the very first paragraph. You're also highly repetitive. THis review was nine pages that could'tve been whittled down to three. You make a huge deal about "padded upholstery" and "pink bubblegum," andj then go on to talk about a brother and sister "nakedly and incestuously copulating." And in the same catagory as the aforementioned "around/about," are the words "screamt" and j"alack." They make you sound like a pretentious dick, which is how you come off anyway. I get the distinct impression you don't want so-called regular people to write. You want "working-cllass losers" to stay that way, and leave the scribbling to enlightened intellectuals such as yourself.
2 - Dan Schneider
A) Jack likes Jill.
B) Jill likes Bill.
C) Jack likes Jill Jill likes Bill.
D) One of the most reliable tipoffs to the fact of a writer’s not being of high quality is when he is overpraised, and overpraised in a way that stresses nothing of a literary nature, usually by a published writer who lacks any skills of his own.
Sentence C is a run-on. Sentence D is a complex sentence.
When one cannot even get beyond criticism of the first sentence of a piece w/o showing one does not even understand basic grammar, nor sentence structure, all the rest becomes an odorless fart.
Keep scarfing onions, though.
3 - Doghouse Reilly
"One of the most reliable indicators of a writer being of low quality is when he is overpraised, especially when that praise stresses nothing of a literary nature, or when it comes from another subpar writer." Isn't that better?
Your first line is only an example of the sort of thing you do throughout the entire review. You string as many dependent clauses together as you can, throw in a bunch of useless phrases like "the fact of," and calling it "complex." That key underneath the L? It's called a period. You don't get charged a buck every time you use it, so feel free.