PARTISAN REVIEW
117
VISIONS OF BATTLEMENTS
DELIVERANCE. By J5mes Dickey. Houghton Mifflin.
$5.95.
THE BAY OF NOON. By Shirley H5zzard. Atlantic-Little. Brown.
$5.95.
CONY-CATCHING. By Kirby F5rrell. Atheneum.
$8.95.
1968.
By Rich5rd Stern. Holt, Rinehart 5nd Winston.
$5.95.
To say of a book that it's the work of a lady novelist is to
do more than comment on the author's gender; it is also to describe a
genre in fairly recognizeable ways and to put it down. Another instance
of the inequality of the sexual burdens - for while machismo may be
morally offensive, it is the matter of some very good books. Shirley
Hazzard's genteel
The Bay of No on
is defined by its limitations; James
Dickey's
Deliverance
manages to transcend them. It is written with a
tough loveliness and its silly ideology does not get in the way of its
doing what a good novel should do - persuade us to accept its terms
and thoroughly absorb us when we do.
Four ordinary, bored, middle-aged businessmen from the South
embark on a weekend canoe trip. They are seeking - the novel is ex–
plicit from the beginning about the spiritual significance of this journey
- deliverance, from the pervasive inconsequence of their lives, from the
failure of potency. Their leader, Lewis - "the only man I knew," re–
marks the narrator, Ed, "who could do with his life what he wanted
to" - has mapped out a difficult river through an all but inaccessible
forest. As the whole terrain will soon be dammed up in the press of civili–
zation, it is perhaps a last chance, Lewis implies, for them to get to the
source of things. Loyal to the rules of their game, they leave technology
behind and take only bows and arrows, putting them at an incred–
ible disadvantage when the violence which we feel is coming begins.
But Ed, who eventually replaces Lewis as the leader, will come to
understand that the fight for the body's survival
is
the soul's resurrec–
tion; for, as Lewis says, like all the heroes of Lawrence and Hemingway
before him, "The body is the one thing you can't fake."
Unexpectedly, the vital confrontation is put to them not by the
land but by two hillbillies with guns who assault one of them sexually
and who turn the remaining two days of the weekend into a terrifying
rite of passage from which there is no recall and from which they will
emerge as murderers or not at all. It is a journey to the limit of ex–
perience which many never touch and from which Ed returns twice-born.
Some men look closer to home, in a difficult confrontation with their
loveless jobs and their mechanical brides.
Deliverance
turns instead to
