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Deliverance

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 14,349 ratings · 487 reviews

The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the states most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published September 10th 1994 by Delta (first published 1970)

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Jul 12, 2011 Stacey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed-from-library, all-time-favorites

Wow. I've been talking about Deliverance to all my friends, who all roll their eyes at me, because I haven't seen the movie.

This was one of the best books I've read this year. The writing is documentary style, but surprisingly lyrical. It's told from a single point of view, and works so well for description, mood, suspense, I absolutely loved it.

Am I the only person in the world who hasn't seen the movie? I'm familiar with the two most talked-about scenes. The banjo scene was beautifully writte...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Evan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-library-top-100-list, __in-my-collection, adventure-fiction, survival

Some impressions of the book four months after having read it:

The book, unlike the film, is told completely from the perspective of ad agency studio artist Ed Gentry, and so there's a lot of stuff about his home, work, family and his lust for an artist's model that are completely missing from the film. The filter of having it all told by him, with his analysis, also is not part of the movie. Ed is a main character in the film, for sure, but quite diminished in the screen version.

The first encoun...more

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Jan 22, 2008 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars

I haven’t seen the film adaptation of Deliverance; I’ve only heard of the infamous “squeal like a pig” scene. Having just finished the book, the movie is next up on my Netflix queue, and I can only hope it’s half as good as the novel. The book does what so many of the greats do: tell a highly entertaining, page-turning story while at the same time layering in ideas and themes one after the other without telling you what to think about them. You could write ten or twenty different viable papers o...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Adam Morel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

For over thirty years, I have avoided this story. A young man with little experience in the woods outside of a KOA campground need not soon revisit such a tale of horror and invasion. Still, the memories of the worst of it, the visual of it have stayed with me, however blurred. The albino boy with the banjo, the wildness of the river, and yes, the screams of Ned Beatty. But film has rarely if ever captured the dark beauty of nature or the hopelessness of true tragedy and so it became time to pla...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Perhaps due to an extemporaneous line in the movie version of Deliverance (it "jokingly" compares the slaughter of a pig to the experience of rape, and is not in the book), James Dickey's masterpiece has become the butt of jokes about "mutant rednecks" in Jeff Foxworthy stand-up routines and the like. This is unfortunate, since it obscures the brilliance of this classic, which the editors of the Modern Library rightly named as one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century. The book is a...more

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Feb 23, 2008 Bloom rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Bloom by: Modern Library Top 100 List

Like many of you, I imagine, I have a simple rule: read the book, then see the movie. But that didn’t happen with Deliverance. I saw the movie many years ago, and just now got to the book. At first it was hard to read the book—quite brilliant in its descriptive power—without seeing Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Jon Voight. But in a testament to the book, slowly they slipped away and the power of the page prevailed.

The plot is well-known: four buddies embark on a canoe trip down the a river in r...more Like many of you, I imagine, I have a simple rule: read the book, then see the movie. But that didn’t happen with Deliverance. I saw the movie many years ago, and just now got to the book. At first it was hard to read the book—quite brilliant in its descriptive power—without seeing Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Jon Voight. But in a testament to the book, slowly they slipped away and the power of the page prevailed.

The plot is well-known: four buddies embark on a canoe trip down the a river in rural Georgia before it is dammed for hydroelectric power. Two locals attack them viciously, and what happens from there is a blend of retribution, survival, loss, and lies to hold it all together.

There are many levels at work in Deliverance, but what struck me was its exploration into the horrific intersection of sex and violence. It isn’t easy reading. At the outset the narrator, Ed, is working on at an ad agency where a model is about to pose half-naked. She is wearing a towel and when it drops “she looked like someone who had come to womanhood in less than a minute.” The next morning, before embarks on this river trip, Ed and his wife make love. It is passionate, but comfortable with what a poet friend of mine called the long experience of love.

Then everything changes. The trip, the attack.

So here we have it: in a just over a hundred pages, the voyeur, the partner, the attacker, the victim are bunched uncomfortably close to one another, and, to borrow from Norman MacLean, a river runs through it. But here the river is neither benign, nor beautiful. It is, from turn to turn, menacing and deadly and claustrophobic. As it runs inexorably downhill, the horrific events and the lies that follow are left upriver where the men can only hope they will remain buried forever.

Was James Dickey suggesting that men are a sum of these parts? Or at least capable of them? Are these various beasts much closer to one another than we like to admit? And how do we react when confronted with the shock of this recognition? These questions are the real river in this book, the downhill force that makes for a complicated journey.

The writing in Deliverance is keen and Dickey drops the hammer mercilessly. That pummeling of the senses, of the heart, leads to a great deal of thought, yes, but at the end one of the four men says, “Come on for God’s sake. Let’s leave this place” and it is hard to disagree.

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Feb 13, 2013 Cbj rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: americana, going-away-from-civilization, pompous-but-interesting, scenes-of-nature, tired-of-modern-life, tough-as-nails

This is a really entertaining novel once the narrators tone changes from that of an irritating middle class pussy who is in awe of the canoe trip and the river to one of a self assured man who is going to hold his own and survive in nature. The first half of the novel was a bit of a slog because Dickey overemphasizes the inadequacy of Ed Gentry (the narrator) and his feeling of awe for Lewis (Ed's ultra masculine friend and leader of the group) almost as if he is a little kid looking up to his f...more

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Dec 01, 2012 Timothy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd never seen the movie and decided to read the novel beforehand. Right after finishing the final page I watched the motion picture for the first time. The book and the screenplay were written by James Dickey and both mediums compliment the other very well.

'Deliverance' isn't your everyday pulp novel; it's modern literature. Mr. Dickey's choice of words, syntax and lack of clichés made it a refreshing and positive page-turning experience. This story of survival is unique and damn good. The bes...more

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Sep 20, 2007 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Ned Beatty fans.

Shelves: fiction

Film narrative and written narrative are two different forms, and ordinarily, I hate the statement "the book was better than the movie." It's usually a meaningless phrase, because the two mediums are so different that comparing the two is rather pointless. In the case of Deliverance, though, it's worth pointing out that you miss quite a bit if you only see the film. Dickey, no stranger to the land he writes about, makes the South a character just as gritty, elusive, profane and poetic as any of...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's too bad that there is such an overwhelming popular culture taboo built around this book, because it is one hell of a good book. While I read it, I kept thinking to myself, "Why did none of my college professors ever force us to read this book?", all the while trying to ignore the simple fact that it would have been too much, too risque, too potentially offensive... and that, in a room full of English majors, who are generally not known for their robustness of constitution or even of knowing...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Review

"A novel that will curl your toes...Dickey's canoe rides to the limits of dramatic tension

...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Jürgen Zeller rated it 5 of 5 stars

Alle Männer sind irgendwann mal Jungs gewesen und suchten nach Wegen das Abenteuer in der freien Natur zu erleben und die Spannung sowie das sich im Körper ausbreitende Adrenalin zu fühlen. Unvorsichtig und den Gefahren nicht wirklich bewusst wurde dem Drang nach Freiheit und Nervenkitzel freien Lauf gelassen und nicht selten endete so manches Wagnis oder Mutprobe mit aufgeschürften Knien oder sonstigen Schrammen. Mit fortschreitendem Alter und den dazugehörigen Verpflichtungen verfällt man in e...more Alle Männer sind irgendwann mal Jungs gewesen und suchten nach Wegen das Abenteuer in der freien Natur zu erleben und die Spannung sowie das sich im Körper ausbreitende Adrenalin zu fühlen. Unvorsichtig und den Gefahren nicht wirklich bewusst wurde dem Drang nach Freiheit und Nervenkitzel freien Lauf gelassen und nicht selten endete so manches Wagnis oder Mutprobe mit aufgeschürften Knien oder sonstigen Schrammen. Mit fortschreitendem Alter und den dazugehörigen Verpflichtungen verfällt man in einen Alltagstrott von Beruf und Familie und auch die Freizeit bietet keine risikoreichen Erlebnisse mehr. Der erarbeitete Wohlstand und der Alltag vereinnahmen komplett, die vergehende Zeit stumpft den Geist ab und so langsam verblassen die Erinnerungen an die aufregende Jugend.

So ergeht es auch drei unserer vier Hauptpersonen in diesem Roman. Bloss Lewis der Fitness- und Körperfanatiker lässt sich nicht treiben sondern versucht mit allen Mitteln von Gewichtheben, Diäten, Leibesübungen und der Lektüre von Büchern über Tierpräparation bis Kunst seinen Körper und Geist fit zu halten und über die Zeit zu erheben. Er ist auch die treibende Kraft hinter dem Vorhaben den wilden Cahulawassee Fluss mit dem Kanu zu befahren. Und so geschieht es das vier Grossstädter sich voller Vorfreude in die unberechenbare Wildnis begeben und sich ein Stück Erinnerung an die Jugend zurückholen wollen. Doch was unbedarft beginnt wird zu einem psychischen Albtraum und ein Kampf ums überleben...

Dieser Roman erschien im Jahre 1970 und wurde nun komplett neu auf deutsch übersetzt. Obwohl der Roman vor mehr als 40 Jahren erschienen ist wirkt er alles andere als altbacken und hat von seiner Aktualität nichts eingebüsst. Im Gegenteil, die zunehmende Verstädterung der Gesellschaft macht ihn aktueller denn je. Das einzige was Heute anders wäre ist die Information über die Gefahren die eine solche Flussfahrt mit sich bringt, im Internet wäre wahrscheinlich jede noch so kleine Stromschnelle verzeichnet und dokumentiert. In den siebziger Jahren musste man sich halt mit einer simple Landkarte begnügen.

Die Geschichte ist aus der Warte des Ich-Erzählers Ed geschrieben und erzählt. Die Gedanken und die Gefühle von Ed werden akribisch geschildert und so entsteht die präzise Beschreibung eines sich heranschleichenden Grauens mit seinen gravierenden Folgen. Die Sprache wirkt zeitgemäss und hat etwas von diesen unvergänglichen amerikanischen Klassikern, mir gefiel sie ausserordentlich gut. Der Roman wird übrigens nur in fünf Kapitel unterteilt und das Erzähltempo ist eher bedächtig aber es entsteht eine unheimlich spannungsgeladene Atmosphäre die sich bald in den fürchterlichen Ereignissen entlädt.

Einen Teil seiner Faszination nimmt der Roman auch daraus das sich die Handlung fernab der Zivilisation in der Wildnis abspielt. Es ist das Eintauchen in eine andere Welt, die Personen sind isoliert und auf sich selbst gestellt. Da gilt es längst verloren geglaubte Sinne zu schärfen uns sich auf seine angeborenen Instinkte zu verlassen. Mit geschlossenen Augen sieht man das aufregende Naturschauspiel mit den intensiv leuchtenden Farben der Wälder vor sich und hört den tosenden Fluss in den hohen Schluchten grimmig rauschen. Der Leser wird so förmlich in die Geschichte hineingezogen und wird praktisch zum passiven fünften Teilnehmer des Ausflugs.

Ein zeitloser Klassiker der Spannungsliteratur mit viel Tiefgang der hoffentlich noch viele begeisterte Leser finden wird.(less)

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Dec 31, 2012 Stephanie "Jedigal" rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mind-body-soul

Wow. This is one of the favorite books of a friend of mine, and its short, so when I saw a $1 book fair copy, I was happy to pick it up. I of course, HAD seen the movie, and wasn't sure I would really care for the book. Not to say its a bad movie, I think its a good movie. But just not sure I wanted what I'd seen on the screen to be described in any more vivid detail. I'm so glad I gave this book a chance though. So different than the movie. I would compare the book/movie difference with Deliver...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Scott Thompson rated it 4 of 5 stars

In this book, Dickey really nailed down the loss of adventure that men feel at a certain age. I know because I am similar to the main characters, especially the narrator. Much of the first hundred pages or so cover the ramp up to the adventure that each of these men need, but for different reasons. The narrator talks of just sliding through his career, and I think many in the white collar world understand this. Life is good, but not usually what was imagined while young and in college.

Where Dick...more

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May 17, 2012 Jayaprakash Satyamurthy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book from which they made the movie that kicked off the backwoods brutality genre.

I haven't seen the movie. It probably isn't as dense with details of slants of thought and twists of mind as the novel is. On the other hand, it probably doesn't have to spend hundreds and hundreds of words describing settings.

Dickey's style is far from stripped-down or terse. It's detailed; very detailed. Often too much so for my taste, getting lost in a second-by-second description of crawling over a rock,...more

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Tfitoby i've been considering reading this for a while and almost buy it every time i see it but i guess it was the fear of what you describe that puts me off...more
May 18, 2012 01:42am

Beth I've seen the movie --- one of the few that's really stuck. The naive hunter becomes the hunted. Good review. Thanks.
May 19, 2012 07:43am

Dan's Obsessions Yeah. Well the movie has a nice setting done by the same dir that made "The emerald Forest" so Burman is no stranger to the jungle-river It also futur...more
May 27, 2012 12:48pm

Apr 12, 2012 Tiffany rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It is undeniable that "Deliverance" has an intriguing and well-written plot. The scenes in this novel are ever so tense, shocking, and memorable. As I read the beginning of the novel, I knew that the emphasis being put on the talk of survival was foreshadowing what would later prove to be the entire struggle that the four men would face in the wilderness of Georgia.

Ed, a man bored with his ordinary job and home life, is persuaded by Lewis to go on a canoeing trip with two other friends, Drew an...more It is undeniable that "Deliverance" has an intriguing and well-written plot. The scenes in this novel are ever so tense, shocking, and memorable. As I read the beginning of the novel, I knew that the emphasis being put on the talk of survival was foreshadowing what would later prove to be the entire struggle that the four men would face in the wilderness of Georgia.

Ed, a man bored with his ordinary job and home life, is persuaded by Lewis to go on a canoeing trip with two other friends, Drew and Bobby. Lewis was a very macho man, an avid outdoors man, and everything that Ed was not but wanted to secretly be. However, the plans of having another weekend adventure canoeing on the wild river would actually turn out to be a trip filled with horror and would force the men to grasp to the essential tools of survival in order to get out alive.

When the two locals attack Ed and Bobby in the critical scene that changes the path of the book, I was frustrated as it is just a constant reminder of the evils that mankind can do to one another. The imagery that Dickey provides during this scene of pure violence is sickening yet necessary for the book's overall impression. It is here that Ed and the men finally realize that their ordinary conventional lives may have not been so bad after all.

I was waiting for the men as they headed down the river to get caught, but it never happened. I think that Dickey chose to end the story like he did so that the story would have the impact on their lives when they returned home. If they were caught for killing the hillbillies, the lesson that their conventional lives they took for granted would not have been a lesson learned.

I think the connection that Dickey was making to the time when the book was written was the shift from the dominant agricultural way of life in GA to the more urban "city" life that was the newer way of life in the state. There are is the divided of the Civil Rights Movement which may have put tension on the four "city" boys and the backwoods locals that may have thought that those city boys thought they were better than they were. There are many connections to be made to the time; however, the story could have been written just to show the lives we take for granted are valuable in a time of stress and in the face of death. (less)

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Sep 11, 2011 Gina Sirois rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: men

Recommended to Gina by: bookclub

This book might have appealed to me more broadly. I was one of those kids who read and loved survival stories with special vigor. The Hatchet, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Call of the Wild, then finally Tom Brown's Field Guide to Living with the Earth (I still have it!). But this is an adventure story first about man vs. man; & man vs. nature seemed only secondary, to me. Civilization was never too far to walk to. The sense of isolation was subordinate to the sense of the malevolence of...more

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Jul 12, 2012 lisa_emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1970, 2012-read

After reading Ragtime (published in 1975), I decided to embark on a reading tour for this summer, I would read one book that was published in each year during the decade of the 1970s. Why? I guess to get a feeling of the literature for that time frame and to see how it compares with the language of now. I selected books on very loose criteria. Two books I had read when I was young, some books were selected purely on their reputation, and some, for their inclusion on important literary lists.

I st...more After reading Ragtime (published in 1975), I decided to embark on a reading tour for this summer, I would read one book that was published in each year during the decade of the 1970s. Why? I guess to get a feeling of the literature for that time frame and to see how it compares with the language of now. I selected books on very loose criteria. Two books I had read when I was young, some books were selected purely on their reputation, and some, for their inclusion on important literary lists.

I start with Deliverance, published in 1970. Firstly, I had no idea this was originally a book. I had known about the movie, although I am the only person I know under 30 who has not seen it. I did know about its reputation, and this gave me some anxiety in approaching it. I was aware of Dickey’s poetry career, and was surprised to find that he was the author of this cult classic. By the way, I found an article that described him with some flair, straight from the New York Times: “He’s been perceived as too studiedly macho, too careerist, a serial exaggerator if not an outright fabulist. (He radically embellished his flying record during World War II.) He slept with too many women; he drank oceanically.”

I don’t know if Dickey created this, probably it was in the culture at the time, but he creates an inversion of the noble savage. Instead we are presented with the backwoods, sodomizing, dentally-challenged, murderous-hick; a figure scary enough to manifest fear in any city-dweller who goes on a camping trip or ventures into the woods, or to the South. One can draw lineage of such anxiety-provoking men straight to the Blair Witch project. I’ve even had a friend from England declare panic after encountering some similar Americans while he was traveling.

This is the crux of the book- the collision of city and rural. And who comes out more violent and destructive; there is very little difference between the two. The story also explores masculinity- what makes a man and what actions does a man take to maintain his sense of self. I kept thinking of Robert Bly’s Men’s Movement (although I think this was started in the ‘90s.) I wonder if Dickey was somehow responding to the emerging women’s liberation movement and was trying hold onto to some standard motifs of maleness. Even the rape scene (which, by the way was a very, very minor part of the book- to my relief) was an exercise of male domination.

This would not be a book I would usually read, I do not care about male-bonding stories or mid-life adventure- find yourself etc. However, Dickey’s poetic abilities are really used to the best advantage. The writing is descriptive and captivating. The reader is really going up that gorge as the narrator does. The tension is built up and draws one in. Overall, it is well-written with themes deep enough to explore.
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Jul 04, 2012 Meglet rated it 4 of 5 stars

My interest in reading this book was piqued by one of those long, rambly, red-wine fuelled dinner party conversations about what books or movies influenced you as a child. I have never seen or heard about the movie and so I had no preconceptions going in. The dinner party conversation had talked more about the books premises on the savagery/beauty of the environment and the human race's impact on it/part in it.

I loved the lyrical writing style, though at times it could become a bit overblown. S...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Gabe Redel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Everybody has seen the movie, sure, but has everybody read the book? Probably not. Should everybody read the book. Yes, sir! Dickey's voice in this classic tale is by far one of the most powerful, thought provoking, and gut wrenching that I've ever read. He was criticized for being a womanizer, and that part of his personality does come out in this story, but if we are to be true fans of an author, then we shouldn't judge a person's personal views because of his fiction narrative. The fact is th...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

* Deliverance is set up the same way as horror movies like Friday the 13th are set up: a group of people go off in the woods, meet some bad guys, find life suddenly reduced to its essentials, until one of them rises up and takes a stand. But there's a difference. As all those horror movie sequels tell us, the survivor ends up plagued by nightmares, unable to integrate what happened into their lives. Dickey's novel, though, is all about that integration, and what it means to civilized man.

* So mu...more * Deliverance is set up the same way as horror movies like Friday the 13th are set up: a group of people go off in the woods, meet some bad guys, find life suddenly reduced to its essentials, until one of them rises up and takes a stand. But there's a difference. As all those horror movie sequels tell us, the survivor ends up plagued by nightmares, unable to integrate what happened into their lives. Dickey's novel, though, is all about that integration, and what it means to civilized man.

* So much so that isn't a genre novel at all. If it had been, it would have been a thriller, but instead Dickey underplays the conventionally exciting scenes because his (and our hero's) interest is the thrill of self-discovery. This is effective enough to make the novel a success, but not so much that it makes it great. It's hard to imagine sitting down with Ed at the end of it all and learning very much. Everything there is to learn is right there in the book, and it's pretty basic stuff for the most part, about losing touch with nature and our more primitive selves in the enervating sprawl of urbanization with its inherent danger of atrophy, weakness, and impotence. The novel could have done with a little less reflection and a little more raw excitement. Just as Ed cares more about himself than his less capable companions, Dickey's self-indulgence is, here and there, simply a time-waste.

* This last is one of the least attractive aspects of the story. Getting back to the essentials can do a lot of things, we conclude, but it doesn't do crap for our sense of compassion or empathy. Not even when we ourselves are saved from ignominy not through our own actions but through blind luck. I kept waiting for Ed to demonstrate these qualities in regard to his friends, but, no, all his eloquence is reserved for himself. I detected no irony here, either.

* But it's the elementals that save the book, the simple power of the situation, told by and about believable characters. It would have been a hell of a thriller.

* Spoilers follow for the film.

* The movie is a fascinating bit of adaptation. When it was over, my wife asked, "How did the book end?" "The same," I said, "but different."

* Indeed, book and film are, on the surface, very much the same. On this level it's the sort of adaptation so many people--people who complain about what's been done to their favorite books in their translation to the screen--would wish was the norm rather than the exception. But underneath, it's a very different story.

* Where the book was all about how Ed integrates his experiences into his life, somehow becoming better for them, the movie takes the opposite approach. I was amused that the movie ends with a dream, a nightmare of exactly the kind that I mentioned above in regard to horror movies. Here, Ed is forever scarred by his experiences along the Cahulawassee River.

* It's a change that makes sense. That is, if you accept that, as a movie, it could only succeed as a thriller. In the first place, the chances of realistically portraying Ed's thoughts (that is, without resorting to a lot of expository and unbelievable dialogue), were next to nil; and in the second, it would have meant underplaying the exciting scenes, just as Dickey did in the novel, which, in a movie, would have robbed them of their elemental power. Such a film would have been talky and boring, two things this movie is not.

* Interestingly, Bobby, he of the squeal-like-a-pig scene (there was no squealing in the book), is the one here who, in a way, integrates what was done to him. Or, if he doesn't exactly embrace it, at least succeeds in forgetting it. In the novel, he's subtly ostracized; here, he makes the choice: he pleasantly tells Ed that he thinks he won't be seeing him again for awhile. Read, never. He's already relegated his experiences to a little locked room in his mind and he'll have nothing further to do with anyone who has a key to that room. This change is also necessary, however, because in the more superficial world of genre fiction, we need it to preserve our sympathy for Ed.

* In many ways, this is textbook adaptation--on the theory that movies and novels are different, each with its own inherent strengths and possibilities, and trying to turn one into a carbon copy of the other is to reduce both to a Michael Crichton narrative screenplay. Which is fine for some stories, but thankfully not for many.(less)

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Oct 10, 2011 Drew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: boulder-public-library

A survival novel written by an illustrious poet is a strange proposition. And it certainly didn't work with To the White Sea, with its delirious, hallucinogenic prose and its antiseptically distant narrator. But Deliverance is as close to perfect as you can reasonably get.

I guess it's basically just that you hardly ever find a plot this tight (or guiltily pleasurable) in a literary novel. Dickey's prose is so nice to read: a mix between Saul Bellow's off-kilter metaphor* and Robert Penn Warren's...more A survival novel written by an illustrious poet is a strange proposition. And it certainly didn't work with To the White Sea, with its delirious, hallucinogenic prose and its antiseptically distant narrator. But Deliverance is as close to perfect as you can reasonably get.

I guess it's basically just that you hardly ever find a plot this tight (or guiltily pleasurable) in a literary novel. Dickey's prose is so nice to read: a mix between Saul Bellow's off-kilter metaphor* and Robert Penn Warren's casual Southern-inflected poetics, applied to Hemingway's subject matter. And as anyone who's seen the movie can testify, the plot moves right along, the edge-of-your-seat survival aspect hardly ever letting up once it gets going. And some of his descriptions of the canoeing and climbing are unparalleled. I can definitely say his description of Ed's night climb is the best I've ever read from a non-climber. At least I assume Dickey was a non-climber.

But what raises this book to five stars for me comes near the end. All through the book Lewis harps on the whole survival aspect of what they're doing -- that the best experiences are borne of mistakes. Things don't go according to plan, and suddenly it's Man versus Wild, or whatever. And you see Ed progress through the book, from originally not taking Lewis seriously to eventually sharing Lewis's outlook. Meanwhile he's trying to conceal a crime (or what could be construed as a crime) from some very persistent backcountry deputies. And it turns out that for Ed, there's a disturbing parallel between the visceral exultation of survival in a hostile environment and the vindictive, childlike glee of a successful deception. And the way Dickey subtly ties these two things together...well, you'd pretty much just have to read it.

*Not a metaphor per se, but at one point Dickey describes a body falling from a cliff into a river as "bursting on the rocks like a bag of jellied sticks." Excuse me? A bag of what? Is this some Southern thing I don't know about? Do people go around carrying bags of jellied sticks?(less)

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Jun 30, 2009 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 10-best-books-read-in-2009

With the popularity of this book, and the 1972 Burt Reynolds movie, I already had a good idea what to expect going into Deliverance. Despite never seeing - or at least retaining - the movie, I knew enough that a group of city dudes would go out in the woods and be accosted by some hillbillies. The back cover of my used, worn paperback copy even told me explicitly there would be "homosexual rape, murder and revenge."

Though I would have preferred to read the book without knowing so much, I found...more

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May 12, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, modern-library-100

I was skeptical about reading Deliverance, owing largely to the famously disturbing scene from the film. It’s on a list that I’m intent on reading, though, and so I decided to tackle it. I’m glad I did.

The premise is well-known. Four men from the city decide to canoe down a wild river that is soon to be dammed up. On their way, they encounter a couple of hillbillies who are intent on murder, and worse. The four men end up in a fight for survival against this evil they’ve encountered, against the...more I was skeptical about reading Deliverance, owing largely to the famously disturbing scene from the film. It’s on a list that I’m intent on reading, though, and so I decided to tackle it. I’m glad I did.

The premise is well-known. Four men from the city decide to canoe down a wild river that is soon to be dammed up. On their way, they encounter a couple of hillbillies who are intent on murder, and worse. The four men end up in a fight for survival against this evil they’ve encountered, against the river for which they are unprepared, and against the modern comforts of modern life that have tamed them.

There is so much to appreciate about the novel, and I think it gives fodder to keep on and keep on thinking about. As many note, much of the novels power lays in its descriptive power, both of the natural and the psychological world. The novel is truly well-written, and it’s especially impressive that the descriptions of the book are in no way gratuitous (as is too often the case in literary fiction) but are both beautiful and fully interworked into the action of the novel.

The novel also just holds a tremendous narrative power. It’s no wonder that Deliverance was turned into such a successful film, because Dickey did not ignore plotting. The action of the novel is very intense and keeps getting more intense, so that I read through the second half of the book just about as quickly as I could to see how it ended. It’s all too rare to read a serious novel that is also a fantastic thriller.

Finally, Deliverance gives a lot to think about...about the changing shape of manhood, about the angst experienced by adults who live with little adventure and meaning in their lives, about the powerful undercurrents of violence that run both in nature and in the human psyche. It’s well worth multiple reads.

I think the only drawback I could see in the novel is the rather one-sided view of rural Georgians. I know that the novel is told, not from the perspective of James Dickey, but from the view of Ed, and so I can forgive the depiction up to a point. But I wouldn’t have minded Dickey troubling Ed’s bias on this account a bit more.

That didn’t ruin the novel for me, though. Very far from it. Deliverance is well worth reading whether you’ve seen the movie or not.(less)

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Mar 27, 2013 Connie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ylto-alphabet-challenge, challenge2013, challenge13, southern-lit, review-pending, challenge, usa

Having never seen the movie but knowing that it involved brutal violence, I have shied away from this novel for years. However, I finally decided to read this Southern classic although it is out of my comfort zone. James Dickey controls the suspense and foreshadowing and spirals it upward and upward until the very second of release is perfect. He builds the tension in the plot until it feels as if something is going to burst. Even though the plot is emotionally grueling and violent, his language...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Daniél Minton rated it 2 of 5 stars

Good grief. I had such a hard time getting through this book. I had just read a "Chick Lit" book that I felt was so "girly," I wanted to read something far on the other side of the spectrum. I chose well, 'cause this is certainly antithetical to the "Chick Lit" genre. It felt so much like a book written by a dude, for dudes. Kinda like when TBS used to run the "Movies for Guys Who Love Movies" specials with flicks like Rambo and pretty much anything starring Jean Claude Van Damme.

At times it wa...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Ry Pickard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i don't know if a story can rightly be called a coming of age tale when the person undergoing the changes is in his 30s or 40s, but there's no question that the narrator in this book emerges from the events described as a completely changed man. there's no shortage of conflict, with the hero confronted with man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself scenarios, and then having to essentially become a force of nature to overcome all three. the story is told from the hero's point of view, so...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Deliverance is a book about four friends who journey down a dangerous and isolated river on two canoes, seeking adventure (and seemingly deliverance). As their three-day trek progresses, they are pushed into dire circumstances where they must make big decisions for survival.

I don't like to label something as "manly" or "womanly". Many reviewers here have considered Deliverance a manly book, and I don't fault them for it, but I believe words like that play into stereotypes about gender. I will sa...more

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Mar 06, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

A weighty book that believes we've built cities and retreated to office jobs to escape the cruel world of untamed freedom. Does James Dickey think that "civilization," although prosaic, is something good, to be admired? Sort of. Without our constructs and comforts, we're reduced to warring people, fighting against nature and each other to survive. Take the narrator of the book as an illustration. He takes a weekend away from his advertising job to take a down-the-river adventure with three of hi...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Franc rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Deliverance" has always had a strong pull on my psyche, thought this comes mainly from the movie. The film came out when I was 11, and I went to camp that summer in Tallulah Gorge where they filmed the cliff-climbing / bow-and-arrow climax. The crew had to buy so many identical green wooden canoes to film the whitewater scenes, and I paddled many times in one of these, bought at auction by my next door neighbors after filming wrapped.

I saw the the kosher version (i.e., no pigs) on network TV co...more
"Deliverance" has always had a strong pull on my psyche, thought this comes mainly from the movie. The film came out when I was 11, and I went to camp that summer in Tallulah Gorge where they filmed the cliff-climbing / bow-and-arrow climax. The crew had to buy so many identical green wooden canoes to film the whitewater scenes, and I paddled many times in one of these, bought at auction by my next door neighbors after filming wrapped.

I saw the the kosher version (i.e., no pigs) on network TV countless times as a kid, and when I was older I rafted all the sections of the Chattooga used in the movie and even ate at the Cookie Jar Cafe where one of the Banjo Boy actor from the film worked.

The author, James Dickey grew up around the corner from my house and went to the same school as my mother. I went to Vanderbilt , James Dickey's alma mater, and like him was also an English major. A First Edition of Deliverance has sat on my shelf for the last 20 years or so, and yet. . . for some reason inexplicable reason, I'd never actually read the book.

But last weekend I was again up in the mountains near the Chattooga River, though this time with a car-load of kids, and I thought it was about time. I spent the weekend reading it on the riverside and in front of a fire while the kids read the ubiquitous "Hunger Games." After reading it think I'm glad I waited until I was a middle-aged suburban business man like the narrator. In youth, like most boys, I was the Lewis character (played by Burt Reynolds in the film) but as we move into adulthood and fatherhood, most of us change into the Ed character (though hopefully not the Bobby/Ned Beatty character.) We stop charging at the world and nature like Lewis, and without knowing it start "sliding" (to use Ed / Dickey's expression in the quote below.) And it is from this section of dialogue quoted below between Lewis and Ed the night before they head up to the river that lays out two opposing forces at work, and I think the main theme of this great novel:

"Funny thing about up yonder," Lewis said. "The whole thing's different. I mean the whole way of taking life and the terms you take it on. . . The trouble is," he said, "that you not only don't know anything about it, you don't want to know anything about it."

"Why should I?"

"Because, for the Lord's sake, there may be something important in the hills. Do you know what?"

"No; I don't know anything. I don't mind going down a few rapids with you, and drinking a little whiskey by a campfire. But I don't give a fiddler's f*ck about those hills."

"But do you know," he said, and his quietness made me listen, although with the reservation that it had better be good if be put that much emphasis on it, "there are songs in those hills that collectors have never put on tape. And I've seen one family with a dulcimer." . . .

"But do you know something, Lewis? If those people in the hills, the ones with the folk songs and dulcimers, came out of the hills and led us all toward a new heaven and a new earth, it would not make a particle of difference to me. I am a get-through-the-day man. I don't think I was ever anything else. I am not a great art director. I am not a great archer. I am mainly interested in sliding. Do you know what sliding is? . . . Sliding is living anti-friction. Or, no, sliding is living by anti-friction. It is finding a modest thing you can do, and then greasing that thing. On both sides. It is grooving with comfort. . . I know better than to fool with [madness]. . . . What you do is go on by it. What you do is get done what you ought to be doing. And what you do rarely -- and I mean rarely -- is to flirt with it."

"We'll see," Lewis said, . . . You've had all that office furniture in front of you, desks and bookcases and filing cabinets and the rest. You've been sitting in a chair that won't move. You've been steady. But when that river is under you, all that is going to change. There's nothing you do as vice-president of Emerson-Gentry that's going to make any difference at all, when the water starts to foam up. Then, it's not going to be what your title says you do, but what you end up doing. You know: doing."

James Dickey. Deliverance (Kindle Locations 438-466). (less)

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About James Dickey

Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. After serving as a pilot in the Second World War, he attended Vanderbilt University. Having earned an MA in 1950, Dickey returned to military duty in the Korean War, serving with the US Air Force. Upon return to civilian life Dickey taught at Rice University in Texas and then at the University of Florida. From 1955 to 1961, he worked for advertising agencies in...more Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. After serving as a pilot in the Second World War, he attended Vanderbilt University. Having earned an MA in 1950, Dickey returned to military duty in the Korean War, serving with the US Air Force. Upon return to civilian life Dickey taught at Rice University in Texas and then at the University of Florida. From 1955 to 1961, he worked for advertising agencies in New York and Atlanta. After the publication of his first book, Into the Stone (Middletown, Conn., 1962), he left advertising and began teaching at various colleges and universities. He became poet-in-residence and Carolina Professor of English at the University of South Carolina.

Dickey's third volume, Buckdancer's Choice (Middletown, 1965), won the prestigious National Book Award in Poetry. From 1966 to 1968 he served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. In 1977 Dickey read his poem 'The Strength of Fields' at President Carter's inauguration. The Hollywood film of his novel Deliverance (Boston, 1970) brought Dickey fame not normally enjoyed by poets.

Dickey's poems are a mixture of lyricism and narrative. In some volumes the lyricism dominates, while in others the narrative is the focus. The early books, influenced obviously though not slavishly by Theodore Roethke and perhaps Hopkins, are infused with a sense of private anxiety and guilt. Both emotions are called forth most deeply by the memories of a brother who died before Dickey was born ('In the Tree House at Night') and his war experiences ('Drinking From a Helmet'). These early poems generally employ rhyme and metre.

With Buckdancer's Choice, Dickey left traditional formalism behind, developing what he called a 'split-line' technique to vary the rhythm and look of the poem. Some critics argue that by doing so Dickey freed his true poetic voice. Others lament that the lack of formal device led to rhetorical, emotional, and intellectual excess. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two assessments, and it will be left to the reader to decide which phase of Dickey's career is most attractive.

Dickey's most comprehensive volume is The Whole Motion (Hanover, NH, and London, 1992). His early poems are collected in The Early Motion (Middletown, 1981). Recent individual volumes include The Eagle's Mile (Hanover and London, 1990) and Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems (Hanover and London, 1982). Dickey has also published collections of autobiographical essays, Self Interviews (Garden City, NY, 1970; repr. New York, 1984) and Sorties (Garden City, 197 1; repr. New York, 1984).

From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press.(less)

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Quotes from Deliverance

“I just believe,' he said, 'that the whole thing is going to be reduced to the human body, once and for all. I want to be ready.... I think the machines are going to fail, the political systems are going to fail, and a few men are going to take to the hills and start over.... I had an air-raid shelter built,' he said. 'I'll take you down there sometime. We've got double doors and stocks of bouillon and bully beef for a couple of years at least. We've got games for the kids, and a record player and a whole set of records on how to play the recorder and get up a family recorder group. But I went down there one day and sat for a while. I decided that survival was not in the rivets and the metal, and not in the double-sealed doors and not in the marbles of Chinese checkers. It was in me. It came down to the man, and what he could do. The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.... At times I get the feeling I can't wait. Life is so fucked-up now, and so complicated, that I wouldn't mind if it came down, right quick, to the bare survival of who was ready to survive. You might say I've got the survival craze, the real bug. And to tell you the truth I don't think most other people have. They might cry and tear their hair and be ready for some short hysterical violence or other, but I think most of them wouldn't be too happy to give down and get it over with.... If everything wasn't dead, you could make a kind of life that wasn't out of touch with everything, with other forms of life. Where the seasons would mean something, would mean everything. Where you could hunt as you needed to, and maybe do a little light farming, and get along. You'd die early, and you'd suffer, and your children would suffer, but you'd be in touch.” — 3 people liked it

“What a view, i said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.” — 2 people liked it

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