Jordan Farmer was born and raised in a small West Virginia town, population approximately two thousand. He earned his MA from Marshall University and his Ph.D. at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.His new novel is The Poison Flood.
At Electric Lit, Farmer tagged seven novels about the beauty and hardship of life in rural America, including:
Knockemstiff by Donald Ray PollockRead about another entry on the list.
I was an ambitious young writer trying to find the courage to send out my stories when I first read this collection. I’d never encountered anything like it, butneither had anyone else. By following a similar structure to connected works like Winesburg, Ohio, or Olive Kitteridge, Pollock explores the desperate aspects of rural America from an insider’s point of view. There are many depraved moments, but even the most outrageous scenes manage to avoid the feeling of exploitation. Pollock’s characters often act in reprehensible ways, but there is empathy here for the young narrator of “Real Life” who only wanted to watch Godzilla at the drive-in but is forced to fight another boy by his father, the addicts searching for a fix in “Bactine,” the weightlifter pressured into using steroids by his abusive father in “Discipline” and the lovesick loner of the title story. Together, the tales weave a panoramic view of a community on the brink of collapse and those caught in the decline.
The Page 69 Test: Knockemstiff.
--Marshal Zeringue
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