Deliverance

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Action Adventure
Review: This remarkable book was James Dickey's first novel. The story is familiar to everyone who has seen the John Boorman-directed movie for which Dickey wrote the screenplay. I reread this recently after reading it over a decade ago and was stuck by how little action there actually is this the quintessential adventure story. Much of the novel is Ed Gentry's inner monologue. He thinks about his life and his dissatisfaction with his job. The canoe trip of this story is taken at the instigation of Lewis Medlock, the character played in the movie by Burt Reynolds. Ed regards it almost as a chore to be endured in order to please his friend. He goes through the motions without any passion until placed in a kill or be killed life threatening situation. You could say that Ed's ordeal is a rite of manhood. Despite being a man in his late thirties, he has not yet proved his own worth to himself. Like a manchild of a primitive tribe, he is sent out into the wilderness and must survive by his owns wits and courage or die trying.

Rating:
Summary: A book of action, drama, and suspense
Review: Deliverance Review
Deliverance, written by James Dickey, is a very suspenseful book full of action and drama. In this book, you are viewing everything through Ed's eyes. Ed is a middle-aged man who in turn loves to do athletic things to make himself younger. Ed is a follower of a man named Lewis in this book. Lewis is the type of person who lives his life through thrill and excitement. Lewis decides to plan a canoeing trip down a very fearsome river. The surrounding woods where the men stayed at night were also filled with danger. The trip that Lewis planned was suppose to be a peaceful one but turned out to be a very tragic one. We see Lewis go from crazy to mad and Ed from a follower to a newborn leader.
I would say that this book starts out a little slow and at first made me want to quit reading. Well my friends, this is one book that you will not want to put down. Once Lewis and company make it to the river, the book goes directly up hill. Everything from there on out is exciting and thrilling. I would recommend this book to any person who loves to read books full of action and people who are in tune with nature. This is a great novel and would love to read it one more time.

Rating:
Summary: "The Demons Within, As Without, Are Many and Brutal"
Review: Deliverance (1970) author James Dickey improved upon his novel in several ways when he wrote the screenplay for the remarkable 1972 film adaptation. While the book is no less believable or prismatic, it is both less powerful and less harrowing than its cinematic double. The expository information that opens the book, all of which is absent from the screenplay, generally doesn't convey anything about narrator Ed Gentry or the others characters that is absolutely necessary or cannot be inferred.

What the novel does underscore is how Ed's admiration for he - man and man's man Lewis, which falls just short of hero - worship, plainly consists of elements of homosexual love and physical attraction. Unrecognized and unacknowledged by either man, and probably returned by Lewis in a lesser degree, this aspect of their friendship is one merely element among others that will explode disastrously into consciousness before their ill - fated canoeing trip down a Georgia river with two other friends is completed.

In the film, Lewis asks Ed starkly why he continues to go adventuring with him, and director John Boorman shortly allows Lewis a brief but telling once - over of Ed's muscular body as he undresses and his shirt slips off one shoulder in a style reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe and other Fifties love goddesses. The novel, however, makes Ed's innocent and spontaneous physical and emotional longing for Lewis clear in a manner that believable, sympathetic, and utterly lacking in complicated histrionics or theoretical psychodrama. Indeed, few authors have ever fictionalized the genuine motivators of male homosexuality as accurately and acutely as Dickey does here.

Deliverance is largely about masculine initiation, and while Lewis the survivalist and body - fanatic is ostensibly a self - initiated man, the novel reveals that Lewis' initiation into the mysteries of life and nature, despite his best efforts and intentions, have been somewhat less than complete. When Lewis fails and the others are injured and otherwise incapacitated, Ed, faced not with the 'gentry' of the mountain wilderness but its opposite, is forced to assume the leadership role, and in the process become, at least temporarily, the shrewd, calculating, and ingenuous hero that will save his own life and the lives of his friends.

Less shocking today than it was upon publication 34 years ago, Deliverance nonetheless remains an original, brave, and truthful work; its themes, far from being outdated in 2004, are even more relevant today, and in more desperate need of answers, than they were in 1970.

Rating:
Summary: A great tail of life in the wild.
Review: I am an english student from Fort Mill High School. I had to read this book for an english project and it has become one of my favorites. It offers a great story of a man and the woods. The river seems to take on human like qulities that show up through out the book. The descriptions that Dickey uses make you spine tingle and your heart long to be in the woods. The story also has a special if you are the outdoor type of person like myself. The sensations become so real you become lost in the deep setting and plot of the story. I would reccomend this book to any outdoor lover, adventure guru, or book fanatic. It is a quick read that will be with you forever.

Rating:
Summary: Great Novel
Review: This novel by James Dickey is an action packed thriller. It is full of suspense and kept me stuck on the page. Dickey uses great details in the beginning of the book to describe the characters to you. He gives you a wonderful background for the rest of the story. The vivid imagery he uses adds to the book continuously. The overall plot is just amazing. The only part i didnt like was the amount of details. At some points the details kept you reading at other points you just wanted to get on with the story. The way he uses things in nature to represent things happening in the characters lives is also great. His wide range of types of characters makes the book all the more interesting. You jump from an illiterate mountain man, to a guitar playing nice guy, to a guy who wants to be immortal and loves nature. If you know a little about the author it also helps in reading the book. It is set in his home town.

This book is a pretty easy read, but is not for the younger readers. The exciting plot along with the unknowing twists and turns keeps you in the book. I would suggest it to anyone who is tired of reading the normal books. This novel is far from normal

Rating:
Summary: The line between civilization and chaos . . . is pretty thin
Review: Clint Eastwood's transition of the Dennis Lehane novel "Mystic River" to the screen did not appear to suffer in the subsequent comparisons between the two. A similar comment could be made of James Dickey's "Deliverance."

Yet for me it is the beauty of Dickey's prose that rears it's head repeatedly reminding us all of his brilliance as a poet and a writer. The descriptions of the wilderness so close to the "civilized world" are enchanting, seductive. And when we see what the 4 businessmen have to do to survive the law of the wilderness and then in a brilliant piece of irony, the law of the civilized world, we wonder who transformed who.

The 4 men, all friends of varying degrees of kinsmanship, agree to a whitewater camping trip in Georgia on a section of the river soon to be dammed up, never to exist again. It's a last taste of this portion of Mother Nature. Lewis Medlock, the strongest of the group in his mental acuity and survival instincts as well as his physical prowess is the natural leader of the group.

Things don't turn sour immediately but then they go downhill fast. A chance meeting with violent 'mountain men' leads to murder, or is it self defense? That leads again to another killing, and the men are faced with dealing with issues, moral and physical, that they never imagined.

Lewis had prophesied to Ed Gentry in the first chapter of Dickey's masterpiece that 'the line between civilization and survival is very thin' and then asks Ed what would he do if he found himself on 'the other side?'

Of course that's what he does after Lewis is savagely injured, and Ed Gentry must take over if any are to remain. Excellent, brilliant movie; better book. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

Rating:
Summary: Leaves you pondering the heaviness in your chest
Review: This is a book I thought I didn't much like all the way through until I realized I had finished it in two days and also found myself repeatedly thinking about it.
I am a woman who doesn't really appreciate the outdoors and all the sport it has to offer (this was my major problem with the novel), but when I really let the weight of the situation settle in, I found the idea of what people are really willing to do to survive quite exhilarating and realistic.
This novel begs the question,"What lengths would YOU be willing to go to to save your own bum?"

Rating:
Summary: Movie is better; first person narrative does not read well
Review: Movie is better; first person narrative does not read well. Read "Catcher in the Rye" for a superior first person narrative.

Rating:
Summary: A book of action, drama, and suspense
Review: Deliverance Review
Deliverance, written by James Dickey, is a very suspenseful book full of action and drama. In this book, you are viewing everything through Ed's eyes. Ed is a middle-aged man who in turn loves to do athletic things to make himself younger. Ed is a follower of a man named Lewis in this book. Lewis is the type of person who lives his life through thrill and excitement. Lewis decides to plan a canoeing trip down a very fearsome river. The surrounding woods where the men stayed at night were also filled with danger. The trip that Lewis planned was suppose to be a peaceful one but turned out to be a very tragic one. We see Lewis go from crazy to mad and Ed from a follower to a newborn leader.
I would say that this book starts out a little slow and at first made me want to quit reading. Well my friends, this is one book that you will not want to put down. Once Lewis and company make it to the river, the book goes directly up hill. Everything from there on out is exciting and thrilling. I would recommend this book to any person who loves to read books full of action and people who are in tune with nature. This is a great novel and would love to read it one more time.

Rating:
Summary: UM, CAN YOU SPELL THE WORD CLASSIC?
Review: I've always been intrigued by the movie version of Deliverance. No, not because it was the only good role that Burt Reynolds had in his career before he sunk into the depths of schlock. What always intrigued me about the movie was the hidden power of nature itself, and I mean Nature, with a capital "N". So here the power of the river lead me to the novel.

Deliverance is about 4 friends, all in their late 30's or thereabouts who all lead comfortable lives and for some reason have a spirtual itch they can't scratch. They know they are missing something but can't really put their fingers on it. The novel is told from the viewpoint of one of them, Ed, who is a successful part owner of a commercial art/photography company. He is so bored with his life and his wife and kids that he longs for deliverance from it. He wants a new life. His best friend, Lewis, offers him a chance to get away from it all by planning a 3 day canoe trip down a little traveled river. Their friends Drew and Bobby also come along. It takes a while for them to get to the actual reality of doing it and you wonder if they're all just going to back out of it, and they almost do. Their lives will be forever changed. Those that live, that is.

This was a great book. It really shows the rotten idealism of the weekend warrior, a plague which has only intensified in the past thirty years. Suburbanites figure they can load up their SUV's and go camping for the weekend and that's considered adventure. In Deliverance, we're in the real deal, survival of the fittest, life or death, pushed to the highest physical and mental extremes. If you're going to be full of pride and believe you can control nature, there's going to be trouble. One of the hillbillies in the novel speaks for the land when he says "what the hell you doing messing around with that river?". Of course the response is "It's there".

Deliverance is a classic classic novel. It gives us a return to the most primal human being and yet also shows heroism and courage, and loyalty. Humans are shown in all their ugliness and beauty here.