KNOCKEMSTIFF author Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock's first book, Knockemstiff, a collection of interconnected short stories centering on a diminutive Ohio town of the same name, reads like Sherwood Anderson hopped up on pork rinds and methamphetamine. Indeed, Pollock's penchant for shining his tight, economical prose into the darker corners of the American hinterland serves as a suitable literary complement to, say, the music of James McMurtry.

Here, New York Times writer Charles McGrath highlights the author on the eve of publication of Pollock's second book, The Devil All the Time...