The Devil's Craft (novel)

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The Devil's Craft is a novel by the American writer Donald Ray Pollock . The original edition was published in 2011 under the title The Devil All the Time by Doubleday , the German translation by Peter Torberg in 2012 by Liebeskind . The novel is considered a representative of Country Noir.

In seven parts - sacrifice , on the hunt , orphans and ghosts , winter , man of God , snakes and Ohio - or 55 chapters as well as a prologue, the novel tells the stories of a number of characters from the American semi-fictional provincial towns of Meade ( Ohio ) and Coal Creek ( West Virginia ), whose paths cross again and again in fatal ways. The time span lies between 1945 and 1966. As in Pollock's debut Knockemstiff, the relationship between people and religion and belief , which often takes on extreme forms of expression, plays a central role in The Devil's Craft . The same applies to the role of violence and sex in the lives of the characters. Pollock's style is naturalistic with a tendency towards the drastic and the detailed description of the extreme. The novel has strong autobiographical features.

The novel was made into a film with Robert Pattinson , Tom Holland and Riley Keough in the leading roles. The Devil All the Time is due to appear on Netflix on September 16, 2020 .

content

Victim
Private Willard Russell comes back from the war, where he had to experience disturbing excesses of violence, and travels to his home village Coral Creek. On the way he notices a waitress while eating in Meade. In the church of Coal Creek he witnessed the grotesque church service of Roy Laferty and the paralyzed, wheelchair-playing guitar-playing Theodore Daniels, during which Laferty pours a glass full of spiders over his head. He returns to Meade and marries the waitress, Charlotte Willoughby. Three years later they have their son Arvin. At the same time, the young Helen gives birth to the daughter Lenora from her marriage to Roy Laferty in Coal Creek. Laferty gave up preaching when he was bitten by a poisonous spider, but now believes he can bring the dead to life. The jealous Theodore persuades him to try this gift on his wife. They leave town after Helen is murdered. Lenora will grow up with Willard's mother Emma. Meanwhile, Willard rents a farmhouse for his family from the windy lawyer Henry Delano Dunlap; however, Charlotte soon developed cancer. In his desperation, Willard erects a prayer tree in a clearing and regularly hangs the surrounding area with dead animals. At this sacrificial site, he and Arvin pray for hours every day for the dying. One day Dunlap tries to convince Willard to murder his sex-addicted, unfaithful wife. Willard kills him - another victim for Charlotte, who dies a few weeks later. Willard commits suicide on the sacrificial site. "Only in the face of death could he feel the presence of something like God."
On the hunt
1965: Sandy, the sister of Deputy Sheriff Lee Bodecker from Meade, and Carl Henderson roam the USA like a perverted Bonnie and Clyde couple, picking up hitchhikers, killing them, draping the corpses in provocative poses with Sandy and Carl, der sees himself as an artist, takes photos of it. "Whoever looked at his photos, even the bad ones from three or four years ago, would never forget them."
Orphans and ghosts
1963: Arvin and Lenora grow up with his grandmother in Coal Creek. He has lost the faith and has only inherited from his father the knowledge of the cleansing power of cruel vengeance. His uncle Earskell gives him the old German Luger Willards. Roy and Theodore have been doing a freak show as 'The Seer and the String Pluck' for years, but are thrown out when Theodore gets involved with the clown Flapjack.
winter
1966: Sandy and Carl are stuck in Ohio, she goes to work, he is bored - they save up for the next trip; Carl gets involved with a waitress. The corrupt Lee Bodecker tries to drive a wedge between his sister and Carl - in vain.
Man of God
Roy and Theodore landed in Florida. Arvin has finished school and works on road construction. There's a new preacher in Coal Creek, Preston Teagardin, a perverted blender who seduces and abuses girls. “A woman needed to know that she was doing bad things if she went to bed with him; that hell threatened her for it. How could someone arouse him who did not understand the desperate struggle that was raging between good and evil, between purity and lust. ”When Lenora found out that she was pregnant by him, she committed suicide. Arvin shoots Teagardin and flees. At the same time, Theodore dies on the beach in Florida.
snakes
Sandy and Carl go on a new tour. For the first time a 'model' escapes them, then they meet their next victim - Roy.
Ohio
Arvin is on his way to Meade, where he wants to visit the old house and the prayer tree again. Carl and Sandy took him away; when they threaten him, he shoots them both. Bodecker finds the corpses and follows Arvin's trail; there is a showdown at the place of sacrifice.

Reviews

Christian Buß describes the novel in the Spiegel as “half Americana work of art, half evangelical exploitation.” For him, “Pollock proves himself to be a logician of madness with this novel…. He thus connects to night-black masterpieces of Americana literature that dealt with fanatical white prayer brothers, to Davis Grubb's traveling preacher novel "Night Of The Hunter" ... for example, and to the chunks of James Ellroy . " Tobias Gohlis holds it in ." the time for "almost impossible depressing biographies which Pollock in ausgenüchterten sound of a case analyst will report to accept as fiction." Christian Schachinger emphasized in the standard the singularity Pollock and describes the novel as "a reading that in contemporary American literature The American singer-songwriter and writer Josh Ritter describes Pollock's style in his review for the New York Times as “sickly beautiful as it is hard-boiled. His scenes have a rare and unsettling ability to make the reader woozy, the ends of the chapters flicking like black horse flies off the page ”. ("Of sickly beauty and hard-nosed. His scenes have the rare and disturbing ability to make the reader queasy, with chapter ends scurrying off the pages of a book.") Robert Goolrick describes the novel in the Washington Post as "literary." tsunami of pure evil. .... Pollock rubs our faces in the Grand Guignol hillbilly myth ”(“ literary tsunami of evil…. He rubs our faces in the Grand Guignol of the hillbilly myth. ”)

Awards

The devil's craft was awarded the German Crime Prize in 2013 (3rd place in the international crime story). The French edition Le diable, tout le temps received the renowned Grand prix de littérature policière and the Prix ​​Mystère de la critique in 2012 .

expenditure

  • Original edition: The Devil All the Time , Doubleday New York 2011
  • Translation / Hardcover: The Devil's Craft , German by Peter Torberg ; Liebeskind publishing house, Munich 2012. ISBN 978-3-935890-94-6
  • Translation / paperback: The devil's craft , German by Peter Torberg; Heyne, Munich 2013. ISBN 978-3-453-43692-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tobias Gohlis: Crime: Under a suction cup . In: The time . No. 10/2012 ( online ).
  2. ^ All quotations from The Devil's Craft , German by Peter Torberg; Liebeskind publishing house, Munich 2012.
  3. ↑ Christian Buß: Pollock's "Craft of the Devil": In God's slaughterhouse. In: Spiegel Online . April 2, 2012, Retrieved June 10, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Tobias Gohlis: Crime: Under a suction cup . In: The time . No. 10/2012 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Fear of God and lust for devil. In: derStandard.at. March 5, 2012, accessed December 21, 2017 .
  6. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books/review/the-devil-all-the-time-by-donald-ray-pollock-book-review.html?_r=0
  7. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-devil-all-the-time-by-donald-ray-pollock/2011/07/12/gIQAImDYOJ_story.html