Deliver Us From Southerners

 My father loved Deliverance the film. Therefore, I first saw it around the age of five or six and then several times throughout the years after. I actually liked the film quite a bit, too. It was not until just recently, however, that I delved into the book. Honestly, my review of it could be this: As a writer, this novel made me jealous.

Yeah, it's near perfect. 

The film has its faults, though it is a great film. The book does not share the film's faults. In fact, it really had none that ruined any of the reading for me. The author, who loved his alcohol, wrote several volumes of poetry, but only three novels. That fact alone makes Deliverance all the more stunning, as it was his first of three. His first of three. I have no desire to read the other two, though. I believe his first cannot be topped. I will not sully that work with something inferior.

The film, after watching it again recently to compare it with the book, influenced me and my writing. I see elements from in it in a lot of what I write about when it comes to fiction. I am hoping his book rubs off on me in the same way. The gorge climbing scene itself is a section that should be taught in writing classes. Some of the lines of dialogue? I read one aloud to my girlfriend and goosebumps traveled up my arms. It's that good. 

My copy of the novel is a fairly beat up edition from Laurel. It's a paperback that I got at a museum sale many years ago. I picked up quite a few good books there, actually, and made my money back and more selling some of them on eBay. I almost sold Deliverance, but I'm very glad I did not succumb to greed on that one. The only way that is leaving my shelf is if I buy a new one in better shape, but to be fair I really like this one's cover.

So here's to James Dickey. He is not alive to read this, but I hope one of his living relatives stumbles across it some day. The man did good. He did damn good.

Click on a link and buy something, and I may get some money as an affiliate that would allow me to buy a canoe to go down this river in Georgia . . .

Violating The Corpse Of GG Allin

I promised a review of Blood For You: A Literary Tribute to GG Allin in my last blog post. Well, here it is. Short version: I like the man and his music better than I do this fictional anthology about him and his many guises.

The short stories are much like GG was back when he still stormed the Earth. They are raw, violent, shocking, outrageous, and sometimes incomprehensible. As I mentioned in that last post, since this is an anthology you are going to have some stories you like and some that fail. Well, I liked a few, hated a few others, and did not love any of them. Whether GG was a floating baby, an operative for President Bush, fighting a werewolf as the "ultimate shock," or hosting a nightclub inside his expanding penis, the stories all showed imagination, but they also required a knowledge of GG and his life. I imagine the editors of this book thought that nobody but die-hard GG Allin fans would buy this, and they were probably right, but readers needed to fill in a lot of gaps on their own, and that kind of ruined some stories.

I know how Merle, the Murder Junkies, the Jabbers, and John Wayne Gacy fit into GG's world. I know it quite well, actually. But the writers got lazy with all that. They introduced characters just to introduce them. They fit in song lyrics just to show they knew them. This casual handling makes many of the stories feel more like bad fan fiction than it does a literary tribute, and that is ultimately disappointing. 

I was not expecting this to be a future classic. I was hoping it would be more than a shoulder shrug of a book, however. The truth of it is, if the average reader who does not know about GG Allin was to read this, they would still have no real idea. You could replace GG's name with any other name, and the book would read the same and mean the same. That is bad fiction. That is cookie cutter writing.

With all that criticism, I am still glad this exists. If it can get someone to look into GG's life and music, then it has done its job. I'm afraid, however, the opposite would happen here. If someone just stumbled into this, they would not be willing to take that plunge into mayhem. In fact, they may not even think GG was a real person. I would not blame them for that. How to fix all this? Maybe a second volume that has a bit of a higher standard for its stories? I'm not sure, but I do know I would not be excited to read it . . . though I would probably still give it a go out of curiosity alone. GG deserves better.

If you click on a link, I may get some scratch in order to buy my weight in coke in whores because I'm an affiliate, man!

The GG Allin of Literature

The blog title is misleading. It should be "GG Allin in Literature," but that doesn't attract a crowd. At this point, I'm not sure how big of a crowd his name attracts anyway, having been dead for far too long, but those who remember him know one thing: they never associate the "rock 'n' roll terrorist" with books. GG was not known for his love of reading. I'm not going to go into all of GG's antics both on and offstage. Look him up if you are curious. I'll just say they involve lots of blood, feces (thrown and eaten), wanton sex (with everyone), drugs, gallons of alcohol, and a whole lot of beautiful, wet violence . . . often of the random sort. I've had my own past with GG Allin, which I've detailed in other blogs, but now I'm getting to know him in a whole new way. I get to read about him as the Sin-Eater, the savior of the world, a floating baby, an operative for President Bush, and a giant robot.

What the fuck am I talking about?

Blood for You: A Literary Tribute to GG Allin. That's what. I'm only about halfway through the book and it's already been a ride as wild as the legend himself. I'm not going to do a full book review of it yet. I just want you to be aware it exists in case I die before I finish the damn thing. It's a real novel; a fictionalized account of GG Allin's  different lives. He is many different things here, and since it is an anthology, your enjoyment of his many guises is going to vary. That's just the nature of the biz.

As I mentioned, I'm not done with it yet, but I do know one thing: by this point you know if you want it or not. Any review I would write doesn't matter. You either want it because it exists (which is I why I bought it), or you want to stay away from it for the same reason. Nobody is going to accidentally buy this thinking it is a children's book or the latest Chomsky. They are buying it because it's GG . . . or not buying it for the same reason.

I went into it expecting entertainment, not greatness. I'll let you know how it all goes. At this point, however, my words mean nothing. Stay tuned here if for some odd reason you are on the fence about the whole thing. If that is you, I find that kind of weird. I've never known a GG fan to be on the fence about anything, let alone a work of fiction about the man.

Oh, and I should mention that a certain serial killer friend of GG's in real life makes more than one appearance. Now you should really know if you want it or not.

Clicking on a link may get me some scratch to buy more of Allin's music because I'm an affiliate of Amazon. Enjoy!