Doubleday bought the book at auction, according to Pollock's agent, Richard Pine, who put the sale in the mid-five-figure range.
"My thinking was," Pollock said, "if Doubleday gets their money back, then maybe they would consider the next book. But if they don't get their money back . . . I didn't want anyone to lose any money on it. I still don't know if they'll get their money back!
"People have told me, 'Hey, you don't need to worry about that,' " Pollock said. "That's not a lot of money for [Doubleday]. Just because I'm looking at it from a viewpoint of a factory worker, well, you know, if you lose a few thousand dollars, to me that's a lot of money. But to them it isn't a big loss."
Pine is feeling good about the whole process. "This is part of what America is about -- the hidden geniuses who are out there, who occasionally see the light of day," he said. "I think it's one of the great publishing stories I've heard, and I've been at this a long time. I just love it. Guys like this aren't supposed to be writing terrific works of fiction."
Leaving the mill
Pollock is a 53-year-old bad sleeper who smokes only outside, or up in his attic office, at home in Chillicothe, Ohio. He met his wife in a car wash in 1988. He quit his union job at a paper mill not long ago, after more than three decades.
"I never really dreamed I'd get out of the mill when I started," he said. "I told my wife, 'I'm gonna give this thing five years and try my hardest and see what happens. And then I thought, well, if I gave it five good years and nothing did happen, I can still say, when I'm laying in the nursing home or whatever, at least I gave it a shot."
The five-year plan went fantastically. His story collection, and perhaps part of the novel he's working on ("a serial killer/coming-of-age book"), will serve as a master's thesis at Ohio State University.
It was almost a year ago when his Doubleday editor, Gerry Howard, presented the then-recently acquired "Knockemstiff" to the marketing department.
"It's a great story, yeah," said John Pitts, the publisher's marketing director. "That he was working the same plant where his grandfather worked, recovering alcoholic, all this stuff. It's a great publicity hook to go out with."
In the 1980s, the publishing industry began to actively create literary "it" boys. The prototypes were Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis. Then came the intellectual set: Dave Eggers and the Jonathans: Franzen, Safran Foer and Lethem.
