Speaking about this to Terry Gross on Fresh Air, he said: 'Well, you know, I'd always been a big reader, as I said.

He did not become a writer until later in life, after getting sober and working at the local paper mill for 30 years. Pollock himself has a backstory that could fit nicely into his novel. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the devil all the time.' Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. The title of the book and film come from early in its prologue: 'Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. This is something established right from the opening of the book, which read: 'Four hundred or so people lived in Knockemstiff in 1957, nearly all of them connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another, be it lust or necessity or just plain ignorance.' On one release of the book, for example, there was a cover quote reading: 'If the Coen brothers want their next Oscar they should buy the rights to this book.' Other copies of the book featured a synopsis that said the novel had 'the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.'

In 2011, author Donald Ray Pollock released the Southern gothic novel, which straight away was getting cinematic comparisons, with people wanting the movie made into a film. The Devil All the Time has come out now on Netflix, nearly a decade after the book it is based on was released.

The devil all time book