Deliverance
by James Dickey

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Book Reviews of Deliverance

Book Review: "The Demons Within, As Without, Are Many and Brutal"
Summary: 3 Stars

What the novel does underscore is how Ed's admiration for he - man and man's man Lewis, which falls just short of hero - worship, plainly consists of elements of homosexual love and physical attraction. Unrecognized and unacknowledged by either man, and probably returned by Lewis in a lesser degree, this aspect of their friendship is one merely element among others that will explode disastrously into consciousness before their ill - fated canoeing trip down a Georgia river with two other friends is completed.

In the film, Lewis asks Ed starkly why he continues to go adventuring with him, and director John Boorman shortly allows Lewis a brief but telling once - over of Ed's muscular body as he undresses and his shirt slips off one shoulder in a style reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe and other Fifties love goddesses. The novel, however, makes Ed's innocent and spontaneous physical and emotional longing for Lewis clear in a manner that believable, sympathetic, and utterly lacking in complicated histrionics or theoretical psychodrama. Indeed, few authors have ever fictionalized the genuine motivators of male homosexuality as accurately and acutely as Dickey does here.

Deliverance is largely about masculine initiation, and while Lewis the survivalist and body - fanatic is ostensibly a self - initiated man, the novel reveals that Lewis' initiation into the mysteries of life and nature, despite his best efforts and intentions, have been somewhat less than complete. When Lewis fails and the others are injured and otherwise incapacitated, Ed, faced not with the 'gentry' of the mountain wilderness but its opposite, is forced to assume the leadership role, and in the process become, at least temporarily, the shrewd, calculating, and ingenuous hero that will save his own life and the lives of his friends.

Less shocking today than it was upon publication 34 years ago, Deliverance nonetheless remains an original, brave, and truthful work; its themes, far from being outdated in 2004, are even more relevant today, and in more desperate need of answers, than they were in 1970.

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