DONALD RAY POLLOCK is the author of the novel The Devil All the Time and the story collection Knockemstiff, recipient of the 2009 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship. He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973 to 2005. He holds an MFA from Ohio State University.
Praise for The Heavenly Table:
“Yes, The Heavenly Table is an old-fashioned yarn with a pretty
predictable plot ─ but that’s the point, and as with The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn (an obvious influence), it is also a riotous
satire that takes on our hopeless faith in modernity, along with
our endless capacity for cruelty and absurd pretension…As much as
we’d like to take comfort in the thought that all of this happened
far away and a century ago, the fact is that Pollock’s funny,
damning novel belongs, more than ever, to the country we live in
now.”
— Alexander Maksik, New York Times Book Review
"Like a hybrid masterwork of Quentin Tarantino and Flannery
O'Connor, Donald Ray Pollock's second novel, The Heavenly
Table, is a comic Southern Gothic romp, hell-bent on making the
reader squirm and laugh, often at the same time...The literary
feast the novel offers becomes its own heavenly table..."
— William J. Cobb, Dallas Morning News
"There’s just no way to emerge unsullied and unscathed from Donald
Ray Pollock’s Southern Gothic outlaw tale The Heavenly Table.
Readers venturing into this grim territory, out beyond Cormac
McCarthy and Patrick DeWitt, in the bizarre vicinity of Harry
Crews’ manic intensity and the depraved noir of Jim Thompson, are
apt to be startled and disturbed by what they witness, and not
least of all by the sound of their own laughter...While some
readers will feel that Pollock goes too far, others will find him
very much in step with the times."
— David Wright, Seattle Times
“Pollock, the author of a previous novel, The Devil All The Time,
and a collection of stories, has a rare gift of creating compelling
characters that interact in a believable manner even in
unbelievable circumstances. Heavenly, despite its dour premise, is
a delight to read, absorbing and thought-provoking. As a historical
novel, it reveals a world that is poised between the past and the
present in meaningful ways.”
— Jim Ewing, Jackson Clarion-Ledger
“The Heavenly Table disgorges a smorgasbord of horrors yet this
reviewer could not stop laughing. Agony can be hilarious. This book
is Donald Ray Pollock’s masterpiece.”
— Vick Mickunas, Dayton Daily News
"In its bloody, violent, terrible collisions, The Heavenly
Table feels like Blood Meridian if Cormac McCarthy
had been born with a streak of black humor in him rather than just
terseness and rage. Or like an early, freaky Tom Robbins novel if
Robbins had been a mean-hearted sadist to whom death (ugly, swift
and meaningless) had been the only natural conclusion to every
paragraph. It is a book that leaves a sheen of filth on you when
you read it. Which makes you taste the road dust and pig's feet
(and worse), and see some things that you can never un-see.
But by the end of it — by the time the curling paths of the
Fiddlers and the Jewetts and a dozen-odd other random characters
have twined together — it has also turned a smart and complicated
corner, asking (without ever really asking) who are the bad men and
who are the good?"
— Jason Sheehan, Npr.org
One of Amazon.com's 10 Best Books of July
"Like Mr. Pollock’s 2011 “The Devil All the Time,” this is a
jauntily amoral, amusingly macabre and somewhat juvenile
entertainment—a beach read to enjoy on the shore of a lake of
fire."
— Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"To read this book, you’ll need a strong stomach and may want a hot
shower afterward, but you’ll never forget Pollard’s compelling
characters." — Vicki Weisfeld, Christian Science
Monitor
"The Heavenly Table succeeds in unifying a series of long and
short narrative strands into a cohesive whole. Without sacrificing
irony, [Pollock's] writing possesses a sincerity that has no time
for late-postmodern gaming, and while remaining committed to
realist conventions, his blue-collar sensibility distinguishes him
from contemporary practitioners like Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey
Eugenides."
— Aaron Botwick,Open Letters Monthly
PW Picks: Book of the Week
"With furious prose and a Faulknerian eye for character, Pollock
(The Devil All the Time) populates his second novel with dozens of
memorable people who embody America’s headlong leap toward the
future in the early 20th century...Pollock knocks it out of the
park."
One of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Best Books of July
"In a dark yet redeeming Gothic story set in the farmlands of
Georgia and Ohio in the early 1900s, the three Jewett brothers set
out on a cross-country journey of crime and violence. Little do
they know that fate has arranged for their paths to cross with a
farmer and his wife who will change their trajectory."
—The Sacramento Bee
"With furious prose and a Faulknerian eye for character, Pollock
(The Devil All the Time) populates his second novel with dozens of
memorable people who embody America’s headlong leap toward the
future in the early 20th century.
In 1917, everything changes for the Jewett brothers—Cane, the
capable one; Cob, the “slow” one; and Chimney, the hothead—upon
their father’s sudden ascension to the “heavenly table.” With the
exploits of their pulp fiction hero Bloody Bill Bucket fresh in
their minds, the brothers embark on a violent journey north,
escaping the backbreaking, fetid swamps on the Georgia-Alabama
border and their lives under the thumb of sadistic landowner Maj.
Thaddeus Tardweller. In southern Ohio, aging farmer Ellsworth
Fiddler and his wife wait for their prodigal son to return home
after a brief absence, during which he may or may not have enlisted
in the United States Army to fight in Europe. Facing inexorable
change—automobiles, airplanes, the machinery of war and
agriculture—Ellsworth and others who frequent the local mercantile
are “in agreement that the world now seemed head over heels in love
with what tycoons and politicians kept referring to as
‘progress.’ ” But the Fiddlers cannot fathom how their lives will
be transformed when the Jewetts ride into town on a crime spree
that has made them the most wanted men in the country.
Set against the backdrop of America’s involvement in WWI and the
rise of motorized and electrical technology, Pollock’s gothic,
relentless imagination seduces readers into a fertile time in
America’s history, exploring the chaos, wonder, violence,
sexuality, and ambition of a nation on the cusp of modernity—and
the outmoded notion of redemption in a world gone to hell."
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Donald Ray Pollock is a master-worker. This great novel
flows like buttermilk, so smooth and entertaining that you won't be
ready for the left hook it delivers to your heart or its
sophisticated moral analysis of human life. Pollock has an
omniscient eye like Gogol, taking in a vast scene while spinning
tales within tales. Readers will love him, writers will study
him.”
—Atticus Lish, author of Preparation for the Next Life
"The Heavenly Table is brilliant and unforgettable. In his
trademark blend of humor and pathos, Donald Ray Pollock gives us a
view into life's darkest corners, without ever forgetting there is
a lighter side as well."
—Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust and The Son
"Think of The Heavenly Table as an antic, shambolic, guilty
pleasure. Pollock’s prose is compulsively readable and often very
funny."
—Booklist
"A darkly comic gorefest by a gifted writer."
—Kirkus
“In a crowded room full of voices, Don Pollock’s voice is so
distinct you’ll hear first and won’t ever, ever forget it. Nor will
you want to. And the kicker is this: He somehow keeps getting
better.”
—Tom Franklin, author of Poachers and Crooked Letter, Crooked
Letter
“The Heavenly Table is the latest and strongest evidence that
Donald Ray Pollock is one of the most talented and original writers
at work today. With uniquely vivid and graceful prose he renders a
tale destined to linger in the reader’s mind, a story by turns
violent and darkly amusing, and always powerful. The novel is sure
to be ranked among the year’s best.”
—Michael Koryta, New York Times-bestselling author of Those Who
Wish Me Dead
“The Heavenly Table is a ferociously gothic ballad about desperate
folks with improbable dreams and scant means. It is potent and
chimeric, dank, violent, swamped in tragedy—and funny as hell.”
—Daniel Woodrell, author of The Maid's Version and Winter's Bone
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