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    Deliverance
    Deliverance
    Deliverance
    Ebook300 pages4 hours

    Deliverance

    By L. A. G. Strong

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    About this ebook

    First published in 1955, Deliverance is the story of Georgie Bagshawe, a gentle, inoffensive young man brought up in an orphanage, who inherits his Aunt Butters's shop. From humble beginnings he becomes prosperous and respected until he makes an unwise marriage with Grace. Slowly he is crushed, put upon and goaded, while all he has inherited is filched away from him. Yet all this he would have borne but for a chance meeting with Ruth in a teashop when he suddenly realizes how desperate his marriage predicament has become. And when, over and above this, Grace keeps him from sharing the last hours of his Uncle Eddie, hatred takes the place of mere dislike, and the path to danger is uncovered.

    At which point the story turns with an unexpected twist...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateSep 28, 2011
    ISBN9781448204861
    Deliverance
    Author

    L. A. G. Strong

    L.A. Strong (1896-1958) was born in Plymouth, of a half-Irish father and Irish mother, and was educated at Brighton College (where in later life he was a governor) and at Wadham College, Oxford (Open Classical Scholar). There he came under the influence of W. B. Yeats. He worked as an Assistant Master at Summer Fields, Oxford, between 1917-19 and 1920-30, and as a Visiting Tutor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He was a director of the publishers Methuen Ltd. from 1938 until his death. For many years he was a governor of his old school, Brighton College. He was a versatile writer of more than 20 novels, as well as plays, children's books, poems, biography, criticism, and film scripts. Some of his poems were set to music by Arthur Bliss. His novel The Brothers was filmed in 1947 by the Scottish director David MacDonald. Selected Poems appeared in 1931, and The Body's Imperfections: Collected Poems in 1957. He also collaborated with Cecil Day-Lewis in compiling anthologies. He formed a literary partnership with an Irish friend, John Francis Swaine (1880 – 1954), paying Swaine a percentage of royalties for five novels and numerous short stories, published between c.1930 and 1953, which were attributed to Strong. These include the novels Sea Wall (1933), The Bay (1944) and Trevannion (1948). Swaine's short stories described the thoughts and experiences of an Irish character, Mr Mangan, a fictional version of Swaine himself. Strong wrote many works of non fiction and an autobiography of his early years, Green Memory (published posthumously in 1961).

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    Reviews for Deliverance

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    • 3/5
      I've been curious about this book for quite some time, though I've never seen the movie. At this point, I'd bet the movie was at least as good as the book. There were a couple long-winded tedious parts involved in this story, including the narrator's description of his job as an art editor, then later on pages of detailed description of exactly how he climbed up the side of a cliff. Of course his anxiety and pain were important, but it seemed to be too much--get on with it before I fall asleep and leave you on the cliff! I'm surprised to say that this was not a fast read for me. Also, the parts I'd expected to be the most suspenseful did not live up to my expectations, which were the fault of this book's legend beating me to any chance at being objective.
    • 5/5
      Will Patton is quite simply the GOAT of audiobook narrators. I could listen to him reading the phone book. However, here he is reading one of the fifty best American novels. Dickey's book is hypnotic, prophetic, biblical, fantastical yet realistic.
    • 5/5
      James Dickey was visiting artist in residence at the Arts Workshops a decade ago. I went there to hear him lecture and meet the man. I brought along my first edition of his book "Deliverance." He enscribed inside these words: "May you find goodness as you go down the river." It isn't rocket science. Drew, Ed, and the boys were travelling the River of Life, and learning some of its rules. Some truths do not have to be disjointedly compared to Virgil or Dante. They can be as simple as Life is Life until you Die.
    • 3/5
      I appreciated the main character's transformation (whose name I can't remember since it's told from his perspective and only mentioned a few times, maybe only once). I thought this would be my kind of story: man against nature and man, but it just wasn't.
    • 4/5
      I saw parts of this movie many years ago, and I found it troublesome. I believe, now, that I didn't even see the movie in its entirety....

      Upon listening to Burt Reynolds' memoir ("But Enough About Me"), I decided I'd like to watch it again sometime... before that, I decided to read the book. (Reynolds said he had read it before being asked to play Lewis--I thought that was interesting, and I realized the actual story must be pretty good.)
      I'm so glad I picked this book up! I really enjoyed the writing itself, and as is typical for me, I was able to read the difficult scenes much more easily than I'm able to watch them. This story is beautifully written--many of the things Dickey's character, Ed, says or thinks are things I could easily see myself saying or thinking. I especially appreciated that the story came from his point of view, rather than Lewis', who I'd initially believed to be the protagonist of the story. In reality, it's Ed's story, and that makes it so much better! I was really able to identify with Ed and his struggles, his fears, and his successes!
    • 5/5
      I read this mostly in one night, because I couldn't put it down. A poetic page-turner action adventure yarn, much better than the movie.
    • 3/5
      Conditioned by the celluloid, I was actually lukewarm with stretches of the novel.
    • 5/5
      Wow. I've been talking about Deliverance to all my friends, who all roll their eyes at me, because I haven't seen the movie.

      This was one of the best books I've read this year. The writing is documentary style, but surprisingly lyrical. It's told from a single point of view, and works so well for description, mood, suspense, I absolutely loved it.

      Am I the only person in the world who hasn't seen the movie? I'm familiar with the two most talked-about scenes. The banjo scene was beautifully written, and the rape is brutal in its simplicity.

      I think that was the best quality of Deliverance - the simplicity. Everything except the country is told in a stripped down, journalistic style, but the river country they travel through, is a fully-realized character on its own. The narrator rambles. He tells what they did in little bits. But he describes what he sees in long panoramas, framed by his designer vision, like a layout for one of his magazine spreads.

      I was prepared to be disappointed, having read several books lately that seemed as though they had been written just to be an easy screenplay. This novel demands to be filmed, and you just hope that it gets done by somebody who can do it justice. I suppose I'll have to watch it, just to see if it happened. Wikipedia tells me: "In 2008, Deliverance was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.'" One can hope that means they succeeded.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite books. Both the smooth writing style and interesting plot made this book a quick read. I have since reread it 2 times. It mixes action with well-written descriptions of the North Georgia wilderness. I loved pretty much everything about this book.
    • 5/5
      In writing about this novel, there’s no need to worry about spoiling the ending for those who haven’t read it. Almost everyone in these United States — or at least in the MSAs of the Sun Belt, where I’ve spent nearly all my life — knows the story or has seen the movie starring Burt Reynolds. Who can forget the rape scene in which two brutal hillbillies attack the chubby city boy? (FWIW, the famous command to “squeal like a pig” doesn’t occur in the novel; it may have been ad-libbed by the actors.) For middle-class, metro-bred Southerners, this scene embodies the fear of the unknown South beyond the suburbs. For other Americans, especially those who despise the South’s political or cultural conservatism, those inhuman hayseeds represent the essence of the whole benighted region. So potent is this scene, in fact, that for many viewers Deliverance becomes a straight-forward action flick about vengeance against evil. Here’s a parody of how Hollywood might trailer the story if it were released today:[Establishing shot of woods.] In a world without law. Only one law remains. Kill. [Drawing a bow.] Or be killed. [Shotgun pointed at chest. Cue music.] Four ordinary men. [Sequence: Men with wives, in city.] Seeking adventure. [Donning life jackets.] On an untamed river. [Men in canoes.] Will find themselves tested by evil. [Sequence: Alarming rural characters.] Violence. [Bow shot.] And death. [Drew’s mangled remains.] They came for the challenge of white water. [Men in canoes, shooting rapids.] Swift currents. [River noise builds.] Unknown canyons. [Sudden silence.] But they didn’t know the real danger. [Cue noise; speed up.] Lurking in the trees. [Trees.] Waiting on the cliffs. [Cliffs.] Armed. [Shotgun.] Dangerous. [Faces of terrified men.] And related to the county sheriff. [Halt. Sheriff to Ed: “Don’t ever do anything like this again.”] Now. [Rapid action sequence.] In the struggle of their lives. They must fight to the death for: [Title.] Deliverance. [Fade over dark scene, night river noises.]Well, all of this is just to say that, compared to the flick, the novel operates at a much higher plane of beauty, uncertainty, and hard choices. (Good luck figuring out what the title really means.) If you only know James Dickey as the guy who did a cameo as the sheriff (yep, that’s him), you need to read his words. Check out this novel. Wrestle with his poetry. I reckon it’ll do you good.
    • 5/5
      Everyone knows the unforgettable "squeal like a pig" movie, but Dickey's original novel about some Atlanta businessmen on a backwoods canoe trip who run into a bit of trouble is just about as compelling. Of course, if you have seen the movie first, you'll envision each character as the actor who played him.
    • 3/5
      3.5 It was alright. Slower than I'd expected. There were parts that dragged with too much detail and others that flew too fast and needed more. Overall worth a read but wouldn't make my read over and over again list.
    • 5/5
      Read this book in one sitting. Pure poetry.
    • 3/5
      Maybe I was jaded by seeing the movie thirty plus years ago but the book just didn't do it for me. The premise is good - 4 city slickers decide to rough in the woods canoeing and bow hunting. Things turn sour after about 40 pages of getting ready for the trip. This is the problem for me - the main characters countless pages of introspection. Also every move they make is told in minute detail. I would save some time and rent the movie.
    • 4/5
      A strong, simple story with just the right amounts of tension, terror, and then relief. Lots of little believable moments that make it as close to real as fiction can ever come.
    • 5/5
      Deliverance is dripping with so much manliness that it would easy to parody, but the novel still works, thanks to Dickey's sentence-craft and finely drawn narrator and protagonist, Ed. To summarize, four suburban Atlanta friends go for a canoe trip on a wild river in north Georgia, and murder, mayhem, and masculine self-discovery ensue. Though Dickey's poetic instincts sometimes lead him to go on for pages about the beauty of the woods, there is plenty of adventure to reward the patient reader. In its portrayal of Ed's ennui, the disappearing Georgia wilderness, and the encroachment of mass consumer culture, the novel anticipates keenly some of the spiritual challenges of contemporary America.
    • 3/5
      Deliverancede·liv·er·ance [dih-liv-er-uhns]noun: the state of being saved from something dangerous or unpleasantDeliverance is the deceptively simplistic story of four ordinary men from Atlanta that decide to go on a canoe trip in the Georgia wilderness. The river they plan to traverse is destined to disappear soon because of a new dam that will flood the area. Soon into their trip, they encounter two men who live in the nearby mountains and their weekend wilderness adventure quickly morphs into a struggle for their very survival.‘The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.’ Unlike most who have either read this book or experienced the movie, I went into this story completely blind, oblivious of the horrors to come. Being a fan of southern gothic fiction though, it was essential I read the original classic that helped to generate the genre. Published in 1970, Deliverance was Dickey’s first novel and the one he went on to be most known for. In 1965, he won the National Book Award in Poetry and those poetic abilities shown through the darkness of Deliverance. The surprisingly beautiful poetic quality added a much needed delicacy to this tale so as to make it a much more agreeable read.“Here we go, out of the sleep of the mild people, into the wild rippling water.” The river itself, the Cahulawassee River, has much more symbolism than one would initially recognize. The Cahulawassee River is being forced into modern times and will cease to exist in a matter of weeks. These four men are forced into changes as well due to the harsh situations they are involuntary put through. It changes their mindset and state of being and forces them to make choices they never expected to have to make. These changes necessitated the realization that while they felt like ordinary men in comparison to the abominations that they faced, they were more than able to transform similarly all in the name of survival.Deliverance is a dark and dismal read but is permeated with skillfully beautiful writing that makes it a completely necessary read for any fans of the genre.
    • 4/5
      Extremely well written, but a very dark story. I have not seen the movie, so I do not know how it compares, but I can't imagine the movie being as good.
    • 4/5
      See, me and the boys - Lew, Drew, Bobby - we went upriver few years ago. Be about ten years now. We go up to this little town to shoot the rapids 'cause they dammed up the river down here, so's that section of God-given beauty be underwater in a few weeks. We get up there and Lew tries find two boys to drive our cars down a ways, bout a two day run, say fifty miles by the way the crow flies. We run into an old man who can't do it, but he says he knows a few boys that could and starts to point us in that direction. About that time, Drew brings his guitar out, and the old man asks this small little runt to pick a song with us. We do, and it was so fine pickin' only a few men have heard. We quit pickin' and listenin' after a few songs, find those boys, and we get ourselves on the river.First day out, that Friday - did I tell you it was one of those long September weekends? - we had a run of ok luck. Drew turned out to be a steady hand on a boat, and his guitar came in handy that night in the woods. Bobby was a useless piece of dead weight, but me and Lew worked together around him. An owl visited me that night. In the morning, I took my bow, the bow Lew got me to buy, into the woods for huntin' . I had a shot at a deer and took it, and missed. We got in the water and then trouble started. Bobby and I, we. We separated. Two roughed-in hillbillys and not that crap hillbilly southern trailer trash you see on the TV nowadays, but true never saw-a-doctor, Faulknerian-ghost hillbillys caught us on the wrong branch of that river. One had a shotgun, one had a knife. And they had us. Tied me up to a tree. Bobby, they left him untied. And. And I won't say what they done to Bobby, but Bobby never really got off that river the same. Lew saved us. He did his part on the river. We buried that hillbilly and moved on. Drew got shot downstream, Lew got hurt. I did somethin' I can't talk about today, nor ever will, notaways with any sense of what it meant. And it meant something, that river, that sin, that weekend.I ain't never been back to that river - it dammed up that winter. I do go back though, in my mind. Because it meant something, that river, that sin, that weekend. It meant knowing what survival means, what a man means.
    • 4/5
      Some hardscrabble, quiet, early 1970's American prose barks out a story of catastrophe and survival when four friends decide to canoe down a Georgia wilderness. The friend who acts as narrator has depth, and the 'leader' of the group is also fleshed out and close to pitch-perfect. The other two friends are underdeveloped, which can be accommodated given the compelling and unexpected plot. For the books small size, it is not as taut and one might think, and the book could be compelling even by adding another 50 or 100 pages. Overall, likely a must-read in the wider canon of late 20th century American fiction.
    • 3/5
      I need a 3 1/2 star rating for this.
    • 5/5
      It's been nearly four decades since this book was published, and it still holds its own with the best adventure/thrillers ever written. I wonder if Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" was Dickey's jumping off point. The similiarities are striking. Also like Dante's "Inferno", the dark woods are where we go to learn what we are capable of. We return to civilization (if we are lucky) with a hard-won self-knowledge and bitter experience. None of the surviving characters rejoice in having survived, but they do have a new perspective and appreciation for their lives.
    • 3/5
      Deliverance - James Dickey ***Like most people I really enjoyed the film and it stirred a sense of adventure in me. With this in mind I purchased the novel, and after reading so many 5 star reviews on Amazon thought I was going to be in for a treat...To say the novel starts off mundane really is an understatement (I understand this is done to show a contrast to the river trip... but does it have to be so long???) the first 40 odd pages are taken up describing his office, business, work colleagues etc etc etc, and this is out of a book with only 230 pages.Anyway, 4 friends decide to throw off the shackles of approaching midlife and plan a trip down a river before the valley is dammed for a lake. The protagonist (Ed) is semi successful business man but totally in awe of his best mate Lewis, who is apparently the epitome of human perfection....I won't go too much into the story as it would spoil the book, but expect inbred hillbillies, guns and a fair amount of testosterone.Would I read it again? No.Would I recommend it? Probably not.Am I glad I read it? Possibly.I know I am in the minority in giving just 3 stars but I really struggled to get through this book and it is one of the very few where I preferred the film.
    • 4/5
      Definitely a man's book. But an interesting take on how vulnerable 'man' can be, especially when he's the white-bread, middle-class, cubicle dwelling type. Not only can nature be brutal, but men living in the hollows of nature can be equally as dangerous. This book could send a chill down the spine of even the most rugged outdoorsman.One aspect that I found rather intriguing is Ed's near-homosexual admiration for Lewis. Is Dickey trying to shed light on another vulnerability?
    • 4/5
      I had not read this book nor seen the movie, but since I'm from Georgia, I felt like I should read it. It's a lot more suspenseful than I had realized and chock full of lots of description, which can get a bit old after awhile. For example, I think it took at least 5 pages of description to get the main character up a cliff. It doesn't really have a satisfying ending, either.
    • 3/5
      This is one case where the fine film reaches the quality of the book. A study in masculinity. Dickey is a good writer and a good poet, but masculinity is not a subject to which I can relate. Nor camping. Nor white-water rafting.
    • 4/5
      I can only think of three reasons someone reads Deliverance. You're a bibliophile who refuses to watch movies if they're based on books, you hate Burt Reynolds, or you have a fantasy wherein you're raped at gunpoint by country boys. My point is, no one watches the movie and says to themselves, "I've gotta read this book!" If you have never heard of Deliverance, you should sublet your rock to the witness protection program. Even if you haven't seen the movie or read the book you've heard about the scene concerning Bobby's anus and one redneck's probing demeanor. Is this because that's all there is to talk about when it comes to James Dickey's Deliverance? Nope. Is it because we're all demented individuals who like to slow down and ogle car accidents? Yep.

      Dickey's novel was published in 1970. To those of you that don't math (yes, math is now a verb), that's 43 years ago. Going into this novel, I was concerned that dated references would detract from my enjoyment of the novel, as with early Stephen King books, but that wasn't the case here. Other than "negro" being used instead of "black" or "African American", this book holds up to the test of time.

      Now for the writing. You will taste, hear, smell, feel, and see everything in this book. James Dickey is a master wordsmith who can play at both pretentious, syntax-juggling, verbosity, or be direct and to the point. There are only two major events in this book: the rape and the revenge. Yet the book is almost 300 pages long. The audiobook - narrated by the ever brilliant Will Patton - is just over seven hours long. This is because Dickey explains every detail down to the minutia. How does bark feel against the palm of your hand when you're nervous? What does it feel like to fall out of a tree and not realize you're falling out of a tree. What does a man look like when he's tracking you if you don't know he's tracking you? Scenes other writers would spend a paragraph on, Dickey spends entire pages describing. If you're not one for heavy-handed detail, run screaming from this book. With that being said, if you're a beginning author and are having trouble with showing instead of telling, this is the book to read. Dickey manages to make all his descriptions part of the action, scene building while moving the plot forward. Image someone staring you in the eyes while secreting a coin behind your ear. Then, when you least expect it, he pulls the coin out and, for the briefest second, you wonder just how in the hell it got there. This is what Dickey's writing is like. A sleight of hand so subtle, you won't believe two things are happening at once. He's entertaining you with scenery so that, when the action begins, you see everything, down to the striations in the bark on the log where the chubby man has been made to bend over...

      So, you might be asking yourself which one I am? Why did I read this book? Am I the bibliophile, the one with the rape fantasy, or the one who loathes that steaming pile of mustachioed narcissism with the vapor-locked face? I'll let you decide.

    • 4/5
      I really want to give this book 3 1/2 stars, but in my own dogmatic schema I only give whole stars! The last 2 /3 were riveting, and I came to love the clever, but somewhat flowery, prose. Dickey can tell one heck of an adventure tale. However, the first 1/3 I found very dull, and the "before" section full of tedious existential musings.
    • 4/5
      In which four suburban professionals with sagging machismo turn to a wilderness experience to restore their connection to the countryside and the authenticity of its residents. It strikes me as unfortunate that this book is best-known for the movie made from it, and, for that matter, that the movie is best-known for an unlikely hit song. As for the book, it is a full-tilt page-turner, one of the best you'll read, with a certain space left for rumination on the human condition, particularly its male portion.
    • 4/5
      Rarely can poets make a living writing poetry. Edgar Allan Poe wrote short stories and edited literary magazines, but still lived in poverty. Carl Sandburg wrote a popular three-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln to pay the bills. Many modern poets teach either literature or creative writing classes. James Dickey (1923-1997) wrote one of the best thrillers of the 1970s, "Deliverance."Earlier Dickey taught composition at Rice and wrote copy for an advertising agency. Of the latter he once said, "I was selling my soul to the devil all day ... And trying to buy it back at night." Dickey later used his experiences in advertising to create the character of Ed Gentry, the narrator of "Deliverance."Ed, an advertising artist, is one of four city men who decide to canoe down a wild Georgia river before it is dammed and turned into a lake. Except for the macho Lewis, the men lack outdoor skills, although Ed has some experience with a bow. Yet when he has a chance to shoot a deer, he fails to make the kill.Their canoe trip turns violent when when two backwoodsmen sexually assault Bobby and Ed. The assault is interrupted when Lewis sneaks up and kills one of the men with an arrow, while the other escapes. Drew argues they should report the assault to the authorities, but Lewis convinces the others that would be a mistake. They decide to bury the body and continue down the river.Later Drew and Lewis fall out of their canoe in the rapids. Lewis breaks his leg and insists Drew was shot. (His body is later found, but even then they can't tell if he was shot or not.) In case there is a sniper on the cliff, Ed climbs it during the night and, at morning light, kills a man with his bow, although injuring himself in the process. Is the dead man one of those who assaulted them or just an innocent hunter? Moral ambiguity fills this powerful story, and it is the one thing, Ed finds, from which there is no deliverance.I returned to Dickey's novel after an absence of more than 40 years and found its impact just as powerful as it was back in the early 1970s. It really doesn't read like the work of a poet just trying to make a buck.

    Book preview

    Deliverance - L. A. G. Strong

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