Deliverance by James Dickey

 

Intense, fierce, harsh, profound - anybody who has either read this James Dickey novel or seen the movie knows what I'm talking about.

Deliverance, a tale where the sentences run over white water rapids with jagged rocks sticking up everywhere. Grab a paddle and negotiate a batch of sentences taken from the first sixty pages where narrator Ed recounts the time prior to when he and his three suburban buddies stepped into their canoes and set off down a North Georgia river. I've also sprinkled in my modest comments.

"This whole valley will be under water. But right now it's wild. And I mean wild; it looks like something up in Alaska. We really ought to go up there before the real estate people get hold of it and make it over into one of their heavens.”

These are the words of Ed's best friend Lewis, the man heading up their river adventure. There's a critical dynamic here that shouldn't be underestimated: the rural folk in North Georgia know they're about to be displaced by urban sprawl and they resent it. In many ways, their displacement and the death of their way of life run parallel to Native Americans displaced by white expansion throughout the West under the banner of manifest destiny, a comparison highlighted by Goodreads friend and literary scholar Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr.

"He was the kind of man who tries by any means – weight lifting, diet, exercise, self-help manuals from taxidermy to modern art – to hold on to his body and mind and improve them, to rise about time. And yet he was also the first to take a chance, as though the burden of his own laborious immortality were too heavy to bear, and he wanted to get out of it by means of an accident, or what would appear to others to be an accident.”

Here Ed describes his friend Lewis. As soon as the four boys hit rural Georgia, Ed gets a taste of the challenges Lewis has taken on for Drew, Bobby and himself. Drew playing music with the banjo boy, their dealings with the brothers they hire to drive their cars back down to town, their tussles with the wild river – everything turns out to be mere prelude to that violent encounter with two hillbillies.

As you read these opening pages, you could ask yourself if you would join Lewis on such a river excursion. Being a city guy myself, I have to tell you that I would not: as an adult, my adventures are taken either through literature and the arts or as an inner spiritual journey by means of meditation and yoga.

"I suddenly felt like George Holley, my old Braque man, must have felt when he worked for us, saying to himself in any way he could, day after day, I am with you but not of you."

Ed is brutally honest with himself: he admits he is very much with the graphic design work he does, that he doesn't have any artistic ambition beyond merely doing the job, that he wants nothing more than to slide through life without undue friction.

But then it happens for Ed: one day at the office he catches sight of the gold in the eye of a young female model his studio is photographing for an ad. All of a sudden Ed realizes his life is one unending sea of inconsequential happenings and he'll never move beyond the colorless borders of his own boredom. Ed flashes on the possibility of another life, a deliverance. How? That thrilling trip up river with Lewis.

"Funny thing about up yonder. The whole thing's different. I mean the whole way of taking life and the terms you take it on."

Again, these are the words of Lewis when Ed asks about what they're getting themselves into. Lewis goes on to explain that not only does Ed not know about the North Georgia rural life but he doesn't want to know anything about it. Ominous, ominous - the life of the hillbillies is not only drastically different but their rural lifestyle is so diametrically opposed to his suburban comfort, fancy house, luxury car, TV and secure company job that he will be seen as the enemy.

"But I believe in survival. All kinds. Every time I come up here, I believe in it more. You know, with all the so-called modern conveniences, a man can still fall down."

Once again, the words of Lewis, this time as he articulates his philosophy of life. According to Lewis, our time on this Earth all boils down to survival - how we're going to save ourselves when all we have to rely on is our bodies and our own inner strength.

Ed retorts that all of what Lewis said here is the making of a fantasy life. Lewis replies in turn: "That's all anybody has got. It depends on how strong your fantasy is, and whether you really - really - in your own mind, fit into your own fantasy, whether you measure up to what you've fantasized. i don't know what yours is, but I'll bet you don't come up to it."

Does this statement, this question, serve as a stand-in for what author James Dickey would like to ask us as we live our own lives? If so, that's one of the ultimate questions - do we really and truly measure up to our own vision of ourselves and our vision of the world? Are we willing to put our vision to the test? If so, how much risk, how much danger are we willing to undergo?

Question to keep in mind as we read this timeless classic.