James Dickey - Deliverance

[dem bones]

James Dickey - Deliverance (Abacus, 1989: Originally Hamish Hamilton, 1970)

Cover illustration copyright Warner Bros. Ltd.

Blurb:
Four men set out from a small Southern town for a three-day camping and canoe trip ... a holiday jaunt that turns into a nightmare struggle for survival.

This is much more than a terrifying story of violence - murderous violence, sexual violence, and the violence of nature - it is a brilliant study of human beings driven towards - and sometimes beyond - the limits of endurance.

Shattering, spellbinding, and a masterly piece of writing, Deliverance has been described as a classic novel of male conflict and survival


`What's the life like up there, now?' I asked. 'I mean, before you take to the mountains and set up the Kingdom of Sensibility?'
`Probably not too much different from what it's liable to be then,' he said. 'Some hunting and a lot of screwing and a little farming. Some whisky-making. There's lots of music, it's practically coming out of the trees. Everybody plays something- the guitar, the banjo, the auto-harp, spoons, the dulcimer – or the dulcimore, as they call it. I'll be disappointed if Drew doesn't get to hear some of that stuff while we're up here. These are good people, Ed. But they're awfully clannish, they're set in their ways. They do what they want to do, no matter what. Every family I've ever met up here has at least one relative in the penitentiary. Some of them are in for making liquor or running it, but most of them are in for murder. They don't think a whole lot about killing people up here. They really don't. But they'll generally leave you alone if you do the same thing, and if one of them likes you he'll do anything in the world for you. So will his family. Let me tell you about something that happened two years ago .....'

The book that inspired a great movie and an all time demonik favourite record - the Revolting Cocks Beers, Steers And Queers. I'm about a third through, out in the woods with survivalist nutter Lewis and the city slickers as they negotiate with the ominous Griner brothers to have their cars dropped off. Narrated by Ed Gentry, he provides us with a little more background to he and his friends' lives than is touched on in the movie (middle class professionals, bored, affluent) but otherwise it looks like we're going to live through all the horrors of their holiday ....