And You Thought Wisconsin Had Quirky Place Names

Link to August 5 New York Times article, "What’s in a Name? Ask Knockemstiff, Ohio".

Excerpt:

A former resident, Donald Ray Pollock, used the town as the setting for a book, “Knockemstiff” (Doubleday), a series of hard-edged, violent and profane short stories about the squalor of life here. The book’s cover, showing a bullet-riddled Knockemstiff highway sign, sets the tone for the collection.
“Knockemstiff had a reputation for being a really rough place,” Mr. Pollock said from his home in Chillicothe, eight miles to the northeast. “When I started writing, I took that and cranked it up a few amps.”

The town’s name is a source of folklore and conjecture. At the Ross County Historical Society’s McKell Library in Chillicothe, an archivist, Pat Medert, has a 1955 article from The Dayton Daily News about the town’s effort to change its name.

Review from 11/19/2007 Publishers Weekly.

A native of Knockemstiff, Ohio, Pollock delivers poignant and raunchy accounts of his hometown's sad and stagnant residents in his debut story collection that may remind readers of its thematic grand-daddy, Winesburg, Ohio. The works span 50 years of violence, failure, lust and depravity, featuring characters like Jake, an abandoned hermit who dodges the draft during WWII, lives in a bus and discovers two young siblings committing incest on the bank of a creek, and Bobby, a recovering alcoholic who must face the imminent death of his abusive father. The language and imagery of the novel are shockingly direct in detailing the pitiful lives of drug abusers, perverts and a forgotten population that just isn't much welcome nowhere in the world. Many of the characters appear in more than one story, providing a gritty depth to the whole, but the character that stands out the most is the town, as dismal and hopeless as the locals. Pollock is intimate with the grimy aspects of a small town (especially one named after a fistfight) full of poor, uneducated people without futures or knowledge of any other way to live. The most startling thing about these stories is they have an aura of truth.

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Collection development alert: 5 copies in LINK; 8 holds. (probably more by the end of the day)

"Knockemstiff" has just been added to Retiring Guy's reading list. (I'm not sure if I can wait for my name to reach the top of the holds list. But since I just start reading Richard Price's Lush Life, I'll stay focused and be patient.)