Deliverance by James Dickey

This book...I should have seen it coming.  You would think that at some point I would have read it but no, I did not.  Nor have I ever seen the movie.  Nor, now that I have read the book, would it have been a movie I would have been dying to see.  And frankly, had I realized "which book" this was, I probably would not have read it either. But I stumbled on it (as I do a lot of the books I read) somewhere in the Nook world and thought, sure, 4 guys go into the wild and have some adventures, why not?

First, now that I have read it, I did google it and its well known both as a book and as the source of the movie by the same name.  

The writing, I will admit, was good...though not as good as the internet seems to think it is. Dickey was a Poet Laureate.  I don't know about all that because poetry this was not, but I did find several passages to be note worthy and I thought the writing was noticeably superior to much of the fiction I come across.

I found this book to be very dated, and not in a good way.  Even for the times the narrator's treatment - and not just treatment but his thoughts about his wife- were terrible.  He wants to go away for the weekend and tells her how he just needs to get away from everything for a bit.  She-good 50s housewife that she is (though I think it was the late 60s) says "oh, I hope its not my fault" and he assures her it is not while thinking "but it partly was, just as its any woman's fault who represents normalcy"...gross.  Later, when he is out in the wild, he thinks briefly about his family at home and thinks "Martha was worrying now, watching TV with Dean.  She was not used to being without me at night, and I could see her sitting with her hands folded, in the position of a woman bravely suffering.  Not suffering badly, but suffering just the same, her feet in hot mules."  Double Gross!!!  I can barely re-write the passage without cringing.  Its hard to believe that the author is simply putting these words into his narrator's voice but doesn't believe them himself.  Its horrifying.  To be sure, women have NO place in this book and its not just these couple of passages.  The whole introduction to the book, the whole background, its all about these men being men.  Its pretty far into the whole story before you even find out that Lewis has a family-he is portrayed as one of those weekend warrior types who works out all the time and is always off doing a triathon or something...but those guys tend to be single because what married with kids guy has that kind of time?  but apparently he does.  Those were the days, I guess, and it was the south, I guess, and wow, thank GOD things have changed.

The book is dated in other ways too, some of them prescient.  As part of his vision for what stimulates Lewis, Ed asks himself :  Did he have long dreams of atomic holocaust in which he had to raise his family out of the debris of less strong folk and head toward the same blue hills we were approaching?  The author was ahead of his time in anticipating the "off the grid" movement...and there is a passage where they float past a broken down shack and one of them points out that part of the crumbling structure was made of "plastic" which "doesn't decompose".  Our narrator, shocked, asks "Does that mean you can't get rid of it...at all?"  "Doesn't go back to its elements" Dean responds, as though that were all right.  So here's a guy who describes his friend Lewis no less obsessively than Nick Carroway does Jay Gatsby, who thinks of his wife as existing literally only in relationship to himself and who ultimately kills a man and hides the bodies of three men, but who also manages to be appalled by the concept of plastic that will never decompose?  What a guy

Then there is "that scene"...frankly I was underwhelmed by it.  I had to read it twice before I even caught on...seriously, I think a reader could just slip right by it and not grasp the full meaning.  I also think that there is not nearly enough emphasis put on the physical toll such an event would take on the individual...he just seemed like, ah, that's over, let's get back in the canoe and get on down the river...yeah, I don't think so.  And there is really no sympathy offered to the victim and the whole scene was just a catalyst for the man versus man/man versus himself/man versus nature showdowns later in the book...as a literary device it did not thrill me.  It felt overly contrived.  As an event in and of itself I get the shock factor. As the event on which the entire premise of the book rests?  I thought it was weak.

Early in the book our narrator describes himself as a "get-through-the-day-man" who is mainly interested in "sliding", which he describes as "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".  Over the course of the book the narrator is forced into a situation he did not ask for and feels like he has no choice about following through on.  But he is a slider and even when he has all the options in the world, he doesn't DO anything...just glides on through:  he declares "I can do anything I have a wish to do, and I waited carefully for some wish to come; I would do what it said.   It did not come."  Sure, he acted when called upon to act, even acted in a way that could be viewed as heroic...but in each case, he only did what the situation demanded, no more, no less.  He's a slider even when doing superhuman cliff climbing...

The book was powerful but not for any of the reasons that its famous for, at least not for any of the reasons I read about when doing a quick google search.  Though I can't say I enjoyed it very much because I did not find it an "enjoyable" read, I think rating-wise it really is a #3-Enjoyed It Very Much.  I would think if for no other reason than to say you have read it, anyone who considers yourself a reader should consider putting this one on your list.  In this post-"woke" world, just be prepared to cringe...