Assailants / Discipline / Honolulu (Storycuts)

Assailants / Discipline / Honolulu (Storycuts)

Summary

In 'Assailants', Del's wife hasn't left the house in six months. He likes to escape the tedium of home life with his unhinged wife and baby daughter by courting blackouts with alcohol and drugs. However a trip to the late-night convenience store reveals a latent marital affection.

In 'Discipline', Luther Colburn has twenty-one inch arms and a fifty-four inch chest. He struggles to instil the discipline that has aided this extreme hypertrophy into his son and protégé, Sammy. When Sammy's ideas run counter to his father's, Luther gets a late vision of his son's unique merit.

In 'Honolulu', Howard Bowman is struggling to remember things. Every morning his wife sets him a challenge or two to try and keep his mind oiled and active. While the names of associates past and present elude him, certain isolated events come back. He gets to thinking about one evening on furlough in Honolulu.

Part of the Storycuts series, these three short stories were previously published in the collection Knockemstiff.

About the author

Donald Ray Pollock

After quitting school at seventeen, Donald Ray Pollock worked at Mead Paper Mill and as a truck driver in Chillicothe, Ohio. After thirty-two years employed as a labourer he enrolled at Ohio State University to study creative writing.

He is the author of two acclaimed books, the cult-classic short-story collection Knockemstiff, which went on to win the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship, and the novel The Devil All The Time.

www.donaldraypollock.net
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