Deliverance (novel)
First edition
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| Author | James Dickey |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
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Publication date
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1970 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 31312271 |
Deliverance is a 1970 novel by James Dickey, his first. It was adapted into a 1972 film by director John Boorman. In 1998, the editors of the Modern Library selected Deliverance as #42 on their list of the 100 best 20th-Century novels. The novel was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.
Narrated in the first person by one of the main characters, graphic artist Ed Gentry, the novel begins with four middle-aged men in a large Georgia city planning a weekend canoe trip down the fictional Cahulawassee River in the north Georgia wilderness. The river valley will soon be flooded by a dam to create a reservoir. Besides Ed, the protagonists are insurance salesman Bobby Trippe, soft drink executive Drew Ballinger, and landlord Lewis Medlock, an outdoorsman who is the driving force behind the canoe trip.
The men drive into the mountains with two canoes. At a gas station in a mountain hamlet, Drew gets out his guitar and plays a duet with Lonnie, a banjo-playing, mentally deficient, inbred albino boy who is apparently a musical savant. After arranging with some local mechanics, the rough and forbidding Griner brothers, to drive the foursome's cars down to the fictitious town of Aintry, where the canoe voyage will end two days later, the men put into the river and begin their journey. After they shoot some initial rapids and the evening approaches, Ed reflects on the isolation into which the group has now voyaged.
The following morning, Ed awakes early and goes hunting with his bow and arrow. Sighting a deer, he shoots but misses because he loses his nerve at the last moment. Lewis is disappointed and Ed grows irritated at his survivalist mentality. After breaking camp, Ed and Bobby set out in one canoe slightly ahead of Lewis and Drew. After spending a night in the camp, Bobby has changed his mind about the outing and is chafing at Lewis' directions, so Ed takes him as a canoe partner to keep the two apart.
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