May 26, 2021 9:18 a.m.
As a lifelong novel consumer who enjoys throwing myself into other worlds for hours on end, it probably won’t come as a surprise that I don’t read too many short stories.
The few I have read were part of a capstone creative writing course my senior year of college. But those short works of literature have stuck with me long after graduation — the copies a little dusty with faded highlighter marks, cracked spines and remnants of past lives in other libraries, homes and schools.
Years later I still remember some of them, primarily due to the feelings I experienced while reading them. As I mention in my review of Knockemstiff below, I still feel physically uncomfortable when I think about that Donald Ray Pollock collection. I have very few visceral memories of books 5-plus years after reading them, but Pollack is different. His writing is haunting and his characters are sad people who do awful things and live in a world, a town, that to them feels inescapable. Reading it made the world around me feel darker, and humanity a little less forgiving. And that sentiment sometimes sticks with you when you read something powerful, no matter how long or short the narrative.