Deliverance

I bought this book for around $1 while living in Denmark...had to get my hands on something in English! Still haven't seen the movie, perhaps because of the disturbing images in my mind. Good book.

Poet James Dickey's book doesn't, in fact, center around a rape scene. Do with that information what you will.

An all-time fave movie, based on Dickey's book, which I read this weekend while at NY Finger Lakes. Wise use of Ed (in film, J Voigt) as narrator/protagonist who breaks free from a soft comfy life and offers analyses of his fellow canoers that the film's time limits preclude. A manly "masculine" book, of men's fears and challenges, some killing, their physicality defining...more

An all-time fave movie, based on Dickey's book, which I read this weekend while at NY Finger Lakes. Wise use of Ed (in film, J Voigt) as narrator/protagonist who breaks free from a soft comfy life and offers analyses of his fellow canoers that the film's time limits preclude. A manly "masculine" book, of men's fears and challenges, some killing, their physicality defining their experiences; women loom faintly if at all in background--yet it is Ed's wife who provides his salvation (deliverance) in the end. (This, a striking parallel to "No country for old men" in which women are minor figures yet the Sheriff's wife also provides him with whatever redemption and grace he can salvage from a mean world.) Dickey's imagery is forceful but can't compete with film director's John Boorman's footage of the actual raging river, the famous dueling banjo scene, and of course the scene that gave America the discomforting phrase "squeal like a pig" (which is not in the book, by the way).   hide

You sure got a pretty mouth