Interviewed by Richard Garn and David Rodriguez.
Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff. 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. Currently, he is a graduate student in the MFA program at Ohio State University and still lives in Chillicothe with his wife, Patsy, a high school English teacher. He hopes to someday teach fiction writing. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Third Coast, The Journal, Sou’wester, Chiron Review, River Styx, Boulevard, Folio, and The Berkeley Fiction Review.
He is currently at work on a novel set in 1965, about a serial killer named Arvin Eugene Russell. Read a review of Knockemstiff here.
Author photo © Kevin Mears
Q: First, I want to ask about your break in publishing. The rumor that keeps going around and around is that it is impossible—or at least really, really difficult—to find an audience for short fiction, and yet you’ve managed to publish a collection of short, rapid-fire stories with Doubleday, a major publishing house. What have been your experiences with publishing so far and what oppositions have you met with?
A: I think everyone knows that it’s hard as hell to find a publisher for a collection of short stories, hard but not impossible. They just don’t sell that well, which is a mystery to me. Most people are so “busy” these days and distracted by technology and bullshit that you would think short fiction would be more appealing to them than a big novel, but that’s apparently not the case. Too, there are just so many of us trying to publish stories. I read slush for The Journal for a year and was amazed at the amount of stuff submitted every month. A lot of it was damn good, but, heck, the magazine could only accept maybe 10-12 stories per year.
As for me, I was very, very lucky to land with Doubleday. An agent just happened to pick up an issue of Third Coast, which is a small but respectable magazine, read “Lard,” and then emailed me. Within a few weeks, his agency had sold Knockemstiff. As for opposition, I probably got 150 rejections from magazines over the course of maybe five years. All the “big” magazines kept rejecting me, along with plenty of the smaller ones. But, as everyone will tell you, that’s to be expected. You just have to keep sending stuff out and plugging away. It’s a tough racket, but those who really want this thing will do that, just keep writing regardless of the number of rejections they receive.
Q: One of the ways in which Knockemstiff succeeds is through its progression from story to story. With eighteen stories, I’m curious how you decided to sequence them. Was that a long process? Can you tell us anything about making those decisions?
A: Well, I really didn’t know how to sequence them and I guess I didn’t spend much time trying to figure it out before sending them on. Gerry Howard, my editor, didn’t like the way I had them arranged, and he asked me to place a date on each story as to when I thought it occurred. Then we just arranged them with the earliest going first and the latest going last. It was miraculous the way they seemed to fit then. He’s a genius!
Q: Having grown up in a small Michigan town—though not as small as Knockemstiff—I’m somewhat familiar with the storytelling style you employ in the collection. On average, how much of your stories are based on things that really happened to you or stories you’ve heard, and how much comes from your imagination?
A: I would say that about a tenth of my material comes from stuff I’ve seen or heard, and then the rest comes from inside my head. I figure most writers need a “prompt” at times to get something started. For example, with the story “Real Life” I began with a vague memory of going to the drive-in with my uncle to see Godzilla, and I just kept working with it until it turned into something totally different.
Q: One of my favorite stories was “Discipline,” about a father who pushes his son to become the next south Ohio bodybuilding champ. Did the inspiration for that story come from your own experiences?
A: As for “Discipline,” no, it wasn’t autobiographical at all. My old man was tough, but he really didn’t give a damn if I played sports or not. I was pretty much in the “loser” clique at school, not the “jock” clique. That story really came about from listening to fathers talk about their young sons playing Little League and high school football. Some of these guys were tyrannical about that stuff, pushing their kids like they were on a friggin’ pro team instead of just letting them have fun and learn about sportsmanship. I also had a buddy who was into steroids at the time, and so I just put the two together.
Q: What draws you to Knockemstiff as a fictional landscape?
A: Much of my work is inspired by memory and the past, and I remember Knockemstiff better than any other place. Too, I’m a bit nostalgic, and I want to set the place down in words as best I can before I die because it’s pretty much a ghost town now.
Q: What intrigues you about short stories? Or, to put it another way, what do you feel is the power of the short story form?
A: I hate to admit this, but one of the main reasons I like short stories is because there is a quick payoff. Unlike the novel, I can begin a story, and in three or four weeks, I’ve got something finished.
I find the novel harder to do because I have a very narrow focus. By that I mean that I can imagine a small scene pretty easily, but the big picture is much harder. Too, I tend to agonize over every word and that makes for slow progress on something as long as a novel.
Q: You’ve said in previous interviews that you get impatient with experimental fiction. Do you feel that fiction has lagged behind other art forms in terms of innovation? Do you see fiction changing radically in the next 50 years?
A: I don’t really see fiction changing that much, but I really fear what might happen to the publishing industry. To think that most books will someday just be read on screens and gadgets makes me a little sick. I keep wishing we could go back to the days of typewriters and snail mail and rotary phones.
Q: In a blurb on your book in Entertainment Weekly, you are compared to Raymond Carver; on the hardcover book jacket the collection is compared to Winesburg, Ohio. Your fiction seems to have more in common with the midwest oral tradition, but stylistically do you feel you draw from Carver or Sherwood Anderson? Which writers do you feel you draw from?
A: I think, if I had to pick, I’ve been more influenced by Raymond Carver than Sherwood Anderson. Of course, I’d read Winesburg, Ohio, but I’d read much more Carver and even copied out a couple of his stories when I was just starting out. Both men deal with people who are “trapped” in some situation or place, and that’s something I’ve always been interested in. As for other writers who have influenced me, it’s a big list, but here are some of them: Hemingway, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, William Gay, John Cheever, Sam Lipsyte.
Q: What’s inspiring you now? Do you have any fiction recommendations? Or music recommendations? Movies?
A: I like to walk around Walmart late at night and sit in diners and drink coffee. Books that I’ve recently read and think about a lot include Serena by Ron Rash, The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggert by Glenn Taylor, and In the Devil’s Territory by Kyle Minor. Also, I’d like to mention three good ones that I’ve had the opportunity to read in galleys and will be coming out soon: Dirty Little Angels by Chris Tusa, Some Things That Meant the World to Me by Joshua Mohr, and Drift by Victoria Patterson. These have all inspired me to try and work harder!
As for music, I listen to all kinds of stuff, from classical to metal to lounge, but lately I’ve been listening to Goatsnake, Sixty Watt Shaman, Johnny Dowd, Jim White, and Aaron Copland.
As for movies, I’ve been on a noir kick, stuff from the late 1940s and early Fifties: The Hitchhiker, Quicksand, D.O.A., Too Late for Tears, Detour, stuff like that. I also still watch a lot of old horror movies from the Thirties through the early Sixties, not just the classics from Universal, but good and bad stuff like The Crawling Eye, The Indestructible Man, The Attack of the Giant Leeches, Midnight on the Bowery, I Walked With A Zombie, etc. I love black and white. The shadows are killer.
Q: From your website I see that you like Monster Magnet. I haven’t listened to them since Powertrip back in the nineties, but I used to love them and I recall their sound to be somewhat reminiscent of your writing style. There is also a nod to the band in Honolulu. How much does music factor into your stories; in the conception and/or in the actual writing?
A: I play music only when I’m revising. I listen to a lot of stuff, but I might play one album over and over while I’m working. That way, once it’s been played a few times, it serves more as a background effect. In other words, I’m not paying attention to the lyrics or the riffs anymore. So, for example, while I was writing the story “Pills,” I listened to Monster Magnet’s Spine of God, a very druggy album, repeatedly while I was revising. Music stirs up certain emotions in me, like it does for most people, and sometimes I can use them in my writing.
Q: What is your writing process like? Do you write by hand? Do you have a certain work routine you like to stick to? Morning? Night? A certain room you write in?
A: As for the process, I try to write in the mornings in the attic from around 6 am to maybe 10 or 11 am. I try to do that every day. I think I’m actually more “creative” at night, but I also like the idea of getting some words down early in the day, before the world breaks in with all its noise and bullshit. I write on an old, clunky computer that isn’t hooked up to the internet and an IBM typewriter. I usually use the typewriter when I’m having trouble with a page. It slows me down, makes me think. Sometimes I go back up in the evening and revise what I worked on that day.
Q: Who is a writer who is currently making you jealous?
A: I’m not sure if “jealous” is the right word, but I admire just about anyone who has the belief and discipline to keep doing this thing.
Q: What kind of child were you?
A: I was a daydreamer who religiously watched Chiller Theater on Friday nights (on WBNS out of Columbus, Ohio) and wanted to be a World War One flying ace addicted to morphine and brandy.
Q: What book did you suffer for the most, and why?
A: The one I’m working on now, mostly because it’s my first attempt at a novel.
Q: What was the greatest surprise for you in your most recent writing?
A: The greatest surprise that’s occurred in my current project is discovering that one of the main characters is not the ruthless killer I had imagined him to be.
Q: What writerly habit would you most like to break?
A: Going back over the previous day’s work instead of pushing forward.
Q: And lastly (for the sake of having a random question): What did you have for lunch today?
A: A piece of chicken and a bowl of oatmeal.
