The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Appalachian Spring

Combine the Heartland evangelism of the Origin of the Brunists with the Appalachian haplessness of The Glass Castle, then season with a few homicides and sexual perversions as in American Psycho and you have The Devil All the Time, an everyday tale of disenchantment with the land of opportunity and its principles.

The main action takes place in the hill country of Southeastern Ohio. The hamlet of Knockemstiff, a real place, is ground zero. The place names are telling. Knockemstiff nestles among other communities like Bacon Flat; Hungry Holler; Deadman Crossing; Scioto Furnace, Aid, Sinking Spring - places named in passing, never meant for settlement. One major purpose of the American Revolution was to open the land to the West of the Appalachians. The British had churlishly refused both permission and protection. But when the first settlers arrived, they just kept passing through. All except, it appears, the morally and genetically deficient.

What seems to be the common thread among the characters is the desire to escape - getting on, getting ahead, and getting out. Getting out not just of Knockemstiff, or Appalachia, but out of America. They all have ambitions - a reputation for something other than what they are, the re-capturing of a childhood feeling lost forever, the sound of the voice of God promised by the preacher at the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified, or simply the possession of a shack on a hill. But they know that no one gets out alive. Their frustration is magnified by circumstances. These are people being driven mad by the cultural weight of Christian fundamentalism, physical isolation in the narrow ravines of worn out coal mountains, and an overpowering environmental bleakness.

If they do escape, it’s only temporary and usually as fugitives from justice. Murder is an act of religious faith; suicide, ditto; serial killing for no reason at all is therapeutic. A kind of nihilistic drive appears genetic. At least it’s passed along by the combination of nature and nurture available around Knockemstiff. The physical connection which generalizes events in Knockemstiff to the rest of America is US Route 50, one of the first national roads built in the 1920’s, which runs from Ocean City Md to San Francisco (now largely replaced by Interstate 71). It passes through mainly rural country; parts of it have been called the ‘loneliest road in America’. Route 50 is the Main Street through the town of Chillicothe (the fictional Meade), about three or so miles North of Knockemstiff. It’s the River Styx by which the dead and the good-as-dead commute in and out of Hell.

Smells are significant throughout The Devil from the outset: the rotten eggs-like fumes from the local paper mill; the rotting animal flesh surrounding Willard’s ‘prayer log;’ the stink of Carl’s body and his wife, Sandy’s, mouth; the throat-catching ammonia reek of the roadside dive; the smell of Charlotte’s lingering cancerous death. The foul odors of Dante’s Canto 11 seem rather tame in comparison. I think Pollock’s point is that closing one’s eyes to the devastation that is America is an inadequate defense. The effects of this devastation are pervasive. Everyone is affected, even those who choose not to see.

One might suspect that Pollock is slandering this inherently beautiful part of the world. But helass recent reports suggest he may have restrained himself somewhat. The biggest industry roundabout is the state prison which is meant to offset the secular decline in the coal industry. For many locals it seems to be a second home close to home. Until recently there was an uranium enrichment facility threatening the locals with further genetic distress; but even that has now closed.

And Pollock may have toned down his fictionalizing of real events. For example an entire family - mother, father, and two adult sons - have recently been arrested for the murder of another entire family - seven adults and a sixteen year old boy - over an issue of custody of an infant (they did leave the infant unharmed, they are keen to point out). The incident was planned over several months and carried out like a military operation (https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-...). The pattern is precisely that described in The Devil - seething tension frequently erupting into brutal violence on a massive scale.

Ultimately, Pollock is making an aesthetic point: America has become an ugly place, a place without discernment. It suffers from a massive lack of taste and this infects everything from the physical environment to morality. As he describes one of his most lugubrious characters: “Looking across the room, he rested his eyes on a cheap framed picture hanging on the wall, a flowers-and-fruit piece of shit that nobody would ever remember, not one person who ever slept in this stinking room. It served no purpose that he could think of, other than to remind a person that the world was a sorry-ass place to be stuck living in.”

Writing The Devil five years before Trump, I suppose makes Pollock prophetic.

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