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Divine Right's Trip: A Novel of the Counterculture
Fiction. A "novel of the counterculture," Gurney Norman's DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP elicited comparison to Salinger and Kerouac upon its publication in 1971. "DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP shows itself to be a subtly written and morally passionate epic of the counterculture, a fictional explication of the hopeful new consciousness come to birth.Divine Right is bigger than life, and in giving the story thus far of a segment of his generation, in prose nicely threaded between the vernacular and the symbolic, Gurney Norman has shown a noble reach and a healthy grasp." - John Updike
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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About the author
Gurney Norman
12 books31 followersGurney Norman was born in Grundy, Virginia in 1937. He grew up in the southern Appalachian Mountains and was raised alternately by his maternal grandparents in Southwest Virginia and his paternal grandparents in East Kentucky in several towns, but primarily in the small community of Allais, near Hazard, in Perry County. He attended Stuart Robinson School in Letcher County, Kentucky, from 1946-1955. Norman attended the University of Kentucky from 1955-1959 graduating with a degree in journalism and English. In 1960, he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University where he studied with literary critic Malcolm Cowley and the Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor.
After Stanford, Norman spent two years in the U.S. Army. He returned to eastern Kentucky in 1963 to work as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Hazard Herald. Leaving newspaper work to concentrate on his fiction writing, Norman took a job with the U.S. Forest Service as a fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon in the summers of 1966 and '67. In 1971, his novel Divine Right's Trip was published in The Last Whole Earth Catalog and subsequently by the Dial Press and Bantam Books. Norman was one of the founders of the Briarpatch Network in 1974, with Richard Raymond and Michael Phillips. In 1977, his book of short stories Kinfolks, which received Berea College's Weatherford Award, was published by Gnomon Press.
In 1979, Norman joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky as an Associate Professor of English. He currently serves as Director of the English Department’s Creative Writing Program. In 1996 his work as a fiction writer, filmmaker, and cultural advocate was honored at the Fifteenth Annual Emory and Henry College Literary Festival, which celebrates significant writers in the Appalachian region. In 2002 he was honored by the Eastern Kentucky Leadership Conference for outstanding contribution to the advancement of regional arts and culture. In 2007 the Appalachian Studies Association awarded Norman the Helen M. Lewis Community Service Award, which recognizes exemplary contributions to Appalachia through involvement with and service to its people and communities. He serves as Senior Writer-in-Residence at Hindman Settlement School's annual Appalachian Writers Workshop. Norman was selected to serve as the 2009-2010 Poet Laureate for the state of Kentucky, and was officially installed as Laureate on Friday, April 24, 2009. On May 8, 2011, Norman was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Berea College. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
After Stanford, Norman spent two years in the U.S. Army. He returned to eastern Kentucky in 1963 to work as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Hazard Herald. Leaving newspaper work to concentrate on his fiction writing, Norman took a job with the U.S. Forest Service as a fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon in the summers of 1966 and '67. In 1971, his novel Divine Right's Trip was published in The Last Whole Earth Catalog and subsequently by the Dial Press and Bantam Books. Norman was one of the founders of the Briarpatch Network in 1974, with Richard Raymond and Michael Phillips. In 1977, his book of short stories Kinfolks, which received Berea College's Weatherford Award, was published by Gnomon Press.
In 1979, Norman joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky as an Associate Professor of English. He currently serves as Director of the English Department’s Creative Writing Program. In 1996 his work as a fiction writer, filmmaker, and cultural advocate was honored at the Fifteenth Annual Emory and Henry College Literary Festival, which celebrates significant writers in the Appalachian region. In 2002 he was honored by the Eastern Kentucky Leadership Conference for outstanding contribution to the advancement of regional arts and culture. In 2007 the Appalachian Studies Association awarded Norman the Helen M. Lewis Community Service Award, which recognizes exemplary contributions to Appalachia through involvement with and service to its people and communities. He serves as Senior Writer-in-Residence at Hindman Settlement School's annual Appalachian Writers Workshop. Norman was selected to serve as the 2009-2010 Poet Laureate for the state of Kentucky, and was officially installed as Laureate on Friday, April 24, 2009. On May 8, 2011, Norman was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Berea College. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
April 3, 2013
I very rarely teach a book I haven't read at least once, but sometimes you find yourself feeling the need for The Syllabus of Living Dangerously....
And so it was that in planning for a class on coming-of-age novels/the history of youth culture fiction, I decided to assign this cult novel because, honestly, I couldn't find much else that fit the pure definition of a "hippie" novel in the way On the Road is the quintessential Beat Novel. In most quarters, Trip is considered the purest hippie or counterculture novel, nevermind the rarefied category of whether it's Good or not. First published in the pages of The Last Whole Earth Catalog, Divine Right was supposed to be a gimmick, a running narrative by a Kentucky-born, Stanford-stamped bud of the Merry Pranksters' Ken Kesey who happened to work as an editor for Stewart Brand's agri-holistic living compendium of the free-lover/acid freak's answer to Sears Roebuck. In the end, Divine Right transcended its early 70s setting to become something more than a timepiece---a charming, sweet celebration of Appalachian folk culture that foreshadows Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country in its acceptance of home, roots, and belonging.
Yes, you can chuckle at the dated references to acid trips and the I Ching, or you can enjoy the slightly more academic invocations of St. George and the Dragon and Joseph Campbell as a model for the epic quest of identity. You can roll your eyes at the pop-culture riffs on Fess Parker and Billy Graham, or you can chuckle at how certain stock characters are invoked only to subvert your expectations of their role. In any other novel, for example, the Lone Outdoorsman who shows up menacingly in the early campground scenes would be a crewcut, gun-loving emblem of that imperial America that (before they were deified as the Greatest Generation) rushed us into Nam with John Wayne glee---an uncle of the vicious rednecks that shotgun Captain America and Billy into oblivion in Easy Rider. Instead, we get a harmless old man who comes to wink at the naive innocence of our hero, Divine Right.
If the book has a major failing it's that there's no real use for the heroine, Estelle, who ends up bailing on our boy DR to return to California. Losing the chick is necessary for the hero to find himself, for once she's gone he returns to his Old Kentucky Home, and it's here that the novel really discards its VW-bug-On the Road premise and becomes a down-home hoedown celebration of The Folk. (Thus, in its original incarnation, the novel was subtitled "A Folk Tale." Why the 1990 reprint calls itself "A Novel of the Counterculture" probably has more to do with keeping its market niche as the only really successful novel version of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test). Once returned to his home country, Divine Right shucks his hippie name and returns to being David Ray, rediscovering through his ministering to the old enfeebled Uncle Emmit A PURPOSE IN LIFE rooted in the land and the rhythms of rural living.
Ultimately, I think what makes the book so charming is its unpretentious treatment of the hero's quest. It's an experimental novel with none of the rhetorical fireworks and posturing of, say, Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (a book I'm actually quite fond of, despite---or perhaps because of---its flaws). In Kentucky, Gurney Norman has the reputation of a sweet, unassuming sage who's helped launch the careers of any number of former students while staying true to old pals such as Kesey (RIP) or fellow Kentuckian Ed McClanahan, whose afterword is spunky, funny, and makes absolutely no apologies for the 1960s. (Nothing worse than a regretful ex-hippie). Norman's rep pretty much encapsulates the appeal of his until recently lone novel: it's a chill-pill vision of the 60s, with none of the Mansonite paranoia and nightmares still plumbed in novels as recent as Inherent Vice. There aren't a lot of relics from the 60s that you can say "I dig it" to without feeling like you're encased in a time capsule. In fact, this just may be the one.
So is it "a novel of the counterculture" or an "Appalachian epic"? Who cares? Are the Grateful Dead stinky, self-indulgent dope fiends or Americana personified? How about both? How about neither? How about not freaking out over defining genres, dude? I am he as you are me and as long as we don't have it hear it sung on Glee we're groovy, brother. By the time Norman himself breaks the fourth wall to show up in the novel, you, too, will want to sit at the sage's feet and tune in/turn on as he rolls you some righteous shit.
And so it was that in planning for a class on coming-of-age novels/the history of youth culture fiction, I decided to assign this cult novel because, honestly, I couldn't find much else that fit the pure definition of a "hippie" novel in the way On the Road is the quintessential Beat Novel. In most quarters, Trip is considered the purest hippie or counterculture novel, nevermind the rarefied category of whether it's Good or not. First published in the pages of The Last Whole Earth Catalog, Divine Right was supposed to be a gimmick, a running narrative by a Kentucky-born, Stanford-stamped bud of the Merry Pranksters' Ken Kesey who happened to work as an editor for Stewart Brand's agri-holistic living compendium of the free-lover/acid freak's answer to Sears Roebuck. In the end, Divine Right transcended its early 70s setting to become something more than a timepiece---a charming, sweet celebration of Appalachian folk culture that foreshadows Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country in its acceptance of home, roots, and belonging.
Yes, you can chuckle at the dated references to acid trips and the I Ching, or you can enjoy the slightly more academic invocations of St. George and the Dragon and Joseph Campbell as a model for the epic quest of identity. You can roll your eyes at the pop-culture riffs on Fess Parker and Billy Graham, or you can chuckle at how certain stock characters are invoked only to subvert your expectations of their role. In any other novel, for example, the Lone Outdoorsman who shows up menacingly in the early campground scenes would be a crewcut, gun-loving emblem of that imperial America that (before they were deified as the Greatest Generation) rushed us into Nam with John Wayne glee---an uncle of the vicious rednecks that shotgun Captain America and Billy into oblivion in Easy Rider. Instead, we get a harmless old man who comes to wink at the naive innocence of our hero, Divine Right.
If the book has a major failing it's that there's no real use for the heroine, Estelle, who ends up bailing on our boy DR to return to California. Losing the chick is necessary for the hero to find himself, for once she's gone he returns to his Old Kentucky Home, and it's here that the novel really discards its VW-bug-On the Road premise and becomes a down-home hoedown celebration of The Folk. (Thus, in its original incarnation, the novel was subtitled "A Folk Tale." Why the 1990 reprint calls itself "A Novel of the Counterculture" probably has more to do with keeping its market niche as the only really successful novel version of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test). Once returned to his home country, Divine Right shucks his hippie name and returns to being David Ray, rediscovering through his ministering to the old enfeebled Uncle Emmit A PURPOSE IN LIFE rooted in the land and the rhythms of rural living.
Ultimately, I think what makes the book so charming is its unpretentious treatment of the hero's quest. It's an experimental novel with none of the rhetorical fireworks and posturing of, say, Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (a book I'm actually quite fond of, despite---or perhaps because of---its flaws). In Kentucky, Gurney Norman has the reputation of a sweet, unassuming sage who's helped launch the careers of any number of former students while staying true to old pals such as Kesey (RIP) or fellow Kentuckian Ed McClanahan, whose afterword is spunky, funny, and makes absolutely no apologies for the 1960s. (Nothing worse than a regretful ex-hippie). Norman's rep pretty much encapsulates the appeal of his until recently lone novel: it's a chill-pill vision of the 60s, with none of the Mansonite paranoia and nightmares still plumbed in novels as recent as Inherent Vice. There aren't a lot of relics from the 60s that you can say "I dig it" to without feeling like you're encased in a time capsule. In fact, this just may be the one.
So is it "a novel of the counterculture" or an "Appalachian epic"? Who cares? Are the Grateful Dead stinky, self-indulgent dope fiends or Americana personified? How about both? How about neither? How about not freaking out over defining genres, dude? I am he as you are me and as long as we don't have it hear it sung on Glee we're groovy, brother. By the time Norman himself breaks the fourth wall to show up in the novel, you, too, will want to sit at the sage's feet and tune in/turn on as he rolls you some righteous shit.
October 11, 2011
I first encountered this book when it was presented in The Last Whole Earth Catalog circa 1974, and as such, was one of the things that shaped me and changed my life and the way I look at things.
May 19, 2019
This book first appeared, page by page, in the "Whole Earth Catalog". I found it in the 1972 edition back in august of that year.
It was perfect summer, out of school reading.
I actually went and bought the paperback edition (Bantam) and re-read it, but somehow it lost it's magic when confined to the pages of a book.
A wonderful book for it's time - it also led me to the only science fiction book I've ever read, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
It was perfect summer, out of school reading.
I actually went and bought the paperback edition (Bantam) and re-read it, but somehow it lost it's magic when confined to the pages of a book.
A wonderful book for it's time - it also led me to the only science fiction book I've ever read, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.
March 6, 2010
I enjoyed reading this as it was serialized in the Last Whole Earth Catalog. This is my 3rd and most thorough reading. It is a fun book to read.
September 17, 2007
Where to begin?
Divine Right’s Trip is the story of Divine Right, a stoned-out dude who travels east to Appalachia with his (girl) friend Estelle in his VW microbus named Urge, also the author of the book’s prologue. Along the way, characters abound. There’s the Anaheim Flash, D.R.’s benefactor; the Captain; Swami High-Time; the Greek, practitioner of the Sumerian diet (“You’re not supposed to get into the Walnuts until we’ve prepared our hearts and minds”); The Lone Outdoorsman, who just stops short of going into action when he sees hippies eating out of the same stewpot. Memorable characters, grand themes (that I identify with) make this one of my favorite “quest” books. Its story can be viewed as a reversal, a redemption, for the Joad family. Divine Right is the Odysseus, Beowulf, and Huck Finn of the 60s.
Originally published as a serial in the margins of the Whole Earth catalog, DRT, has been hailed by some as a hippie novel that blows Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test out of the water. Norman is a Kentucky writer, who, like Wendell Berry, did grad work at Stanford, only to return to his native roots. Many of Berry’s themes—the value of hard work; care for the environment; the destructive forces of economies out of scale; etc. resonate throughout.
Divine Right’s Trip is the story of Divine Right, a stoned-out dude who travels east to Appalachia with his (girl) friend Estelle in his VW microbus named Urge, also the author of the book’s prologue. Along the way, characters abound. There’s the Anaheim Flash, D.R.’s benefactor; the Captain; Swami High-Time; the Greek, practitioner of the Sumerian diet (“You’re not supposed to get into the Walnuts until we’ve prepared our hearts and minds”); The Lone Outdoorsman, who just stops short of going into action when he sees hippies eating out of the same stewpot. Memorable characters, grand themes (that I identify with) make this one of my favorite “quest” books. Its story can be viewed as a reversal, a redemption, for the Joad family. Divine Right is the Odysseus, Beowulf, and Huck Finn of the 60s.
Originally published as a serial in the margins of the Whole Earth catalog, DRT, has been hailed by some as a hippie novel that blows Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test out of the water. Norman is a Kentucky writer, who, like Wendell Berry, did grad work at Stanford, only to return to his native roots. Many of Berry’s themes—the value of hard work; care for the environment; the destructive forces of economies out of scale; etc. resonate throughout.
March 5, 2008
Had I come of age in the 60s, or had I been smart enough to fully detect all of the literary illusions in this book, I probably would have liked it even more than I already did. What I initially thought was going to just be one long chemical trip across the country (think Kerouac with even more drugs), turned out to be a comical, tragic, hopeful exploration (and living out) of Divine Right's idealism. Plus, I think it'd be really cool to have friends with names like the Anaheim Flash.
July 8, 2013
Maybe I was smoking too much in my college days. I put a sticker inside this book and wrote, "Time fades in and out like the cat." Then I wrote the lamest blurb ever: "Fun, cute, bizarre in a profound way. Journey underlies life and self." Really? Okay. But I do recall thoroughly enjoying the quirky style and philosophical undertones.
March 18, 2010
This is my most favoritest book ever.
November 23, 2020
One of my favorite books of all time, a staple of the counter culture movement. Odysseus wearing Lennins and his trusty VW Minibus guiding him back to the bluegrass.
June 30, 2020
A cursory glance at any review lets you know that this is considered the underground manifesto of the hippy movement. It draws comparisons to all the more famous novels which have captured the urgent revolutionary heart of youth cultures throughout history. While it is easy to see why Divine Right's Trip is that book, it stands apart as almost obliviously hopeful where so many other books seem to fall toward martyrdom or cautionary tale. When other books attempt to spell out a moral perspective that requires specific changes for a culture at large, Divine Right's Trip is about getting back to an original state of wholeness on an individual scale. Where other books set up a stereotype hero and show that hero being chewed up and spit out by the machinery against which they wage war, Divine Right is about a snatching up for redemption, regardless of external agents.
The "trip" of the title is a double entendre, for DR Davenport spends the greater part of this novel stoned beyond the pale. He is on a quest, for that of which he knows not, wandering in an embrace of carefree living that seems increasingly burdened by cares. As relationships end and dissolve and old ones come into focus, the book transitions from on the road to an accidental homecoming. DR ends up back where his childhood took place, recognizing that it is filled with both nostalgic longing and a beauty and purpose of which he never had an inkling. In a quiet place and a simple life, he might find that the solace his generation is frantically turning every which way to find actually lies with the common people who live as his grandparents once had.
The first half of this book is the drug-addled nosedive at the end of a "peace, love and rock n' roll" tour of the country. While the beliefs and customs of the hippy culture are by no means abandoned, it becomes obvious that the payoff of a lifestyle espousing the movement isn't creating any sort of peace or love in DR's life. The transition in the middle of the book feels like a personal derailment that slowly reveals itself to be a divine response toward greener pastures, DR is utterly removed from every context he has known since he was a young boy and is required to both detox chemically and in his identity, to sit in a quiet place of contemplation and simple tasks. In a way, it feels like he is placed in supernatural probation. In this place, he is transformed from within and without. This book started out feeling like a rehashing of what have become cliches, but it ends up in a uniquely divine space which feels universally ideal.
What means the most in this book is what isn't mentioned. DR is a character who sets a tone of avoidance. Throughout this book he is avoiding dealing with disagreements and dealing with any heavy reality. While Divine Right's Trip portrays many personal injustices and those of society at large, it passes over them, slowly turning from avoidance to gaze upon a health life beyond simply responding to trauma. Terrible things happen, people offend one another, and destruction in a modern age is at times literally looming over the characters and casting a shadow upon them. But as DR wrestles with his demons or dragons, he is so drawn to the light, to wholeness, that he cannot divert his attention toward the unholy monster screaming destruction and distraction in his ear. While a hippy might try to ignore the evil in the world or live in reaction to it, Divine Right slowly understands that there is no hope in simply overcoming or dodging evil. Unique wholeness, it seems, cannot be found in reaction. Wholeness comes in relation to something which is itself whole and unbreakable. Divine Right finds that the revolutionary solution lies in a timeless humanity, and the book seeks to marry the two.
Divine Right's Trip balls up the entire zeitgeist of the counterculture movement and tosses it forward toward an eternal solution which has preexisted it and been available in our own back yards all along.
The "trip" of the title is a double entendre, for DR Davenport spends the greater part of this novel stoned beyond the pale. He is on a quest, for that of which he knows not, wandering in an embrace of carefree living that seems increasingly burdened by cares. As relationships end and dissolve and old ones come into focus, the book transitions from on the road to an accidental homecoming. DR ends up back where his childhood took place, recognizing that it is filled with both nostalgic longing and a beauty and purpose of which he never had an inkling. In a quiet place and a simple life, he might find that the solace his generation is frantically turning every which way to find actually lies with the common people who live as his grandparents once had.
The first half of this book is the drug-addled nosedive at the end of a "peace, love and rock n' roll" tour of the country. While the beliefs and customs of the hippy culture are by no means abandoned, it becomes obvious that the payoff of a lifestyle espousing the movement isn't creating any sort of peace or love in DR's life. The transition in the middle of the book feels like a personal derailment that slowly reveals itself to be a divine response toward greener pastures, DR is utterly removed from every context he has known since he was a young boy and is required to both detox chemically and in his identity, to sit in a quiet place of contemplation and simple tasks. In a way, it feels like he is placed in supernatural probation. In this place, he is transformed from within and without. This book started out feeling like a rehashing of what have become cliches, but it ends up in a uniquely divine space which feels universally ideal.
What means the most in this book is what isn't mentioned. DR is a character who sets a tone of avoidance. Throughout this book he is avoiding dealing with disagreements and dealing with any heavy reality. While Divine Right's Trip portrays many personal injustices and those of society at large, it passes over them, slowly turning from avoidance to gaze upon a health life beyond simply responding to trauma. Terrible things happen, people offend one another, and destruction in a modern age is at times literally looming over the characters and casting a shadow upon them. But as DR wrestles with his demons or dragons, he is so drawn to the light, to wholeness, that he cannot divert his attention toward the unholy monster screaming destruction and distraction in his ear. While a hippy might try to ignore the evil in the world or live in reaction to it, Divine Right slowly understands that there is no hope in simply overcoming or dodging evil. Unique wholeness, it seems, cannot be found in reaction. Wholeness comes in relation to something which is itself whole and unbreakable. Divine Right finds that the revolutionary solution lies in a timeless humanity, and the book seeks to marry the two.
Divine Right's Trip balls up the entire zeitgeist of the counterculture movement and tosses it forward toward an eternal solution which has preexisted it and been available in our own back yards all along.
December 16, 2022
A happy hippie tale about a bloke in a camper van living the counter-cultural life and ending up married on his childhood homestead, making a subsistence living on land blasted by strip-mining. Pacy and amusing start, but became harder to read later on as the hero struggled with the major issues in his life. And the tolerant rural idyll populated by big-hearted rustics that is portrayed in this book is hard to reconcile with what we see and read in the news about gun-happy white supremacists baying for another four years of Trump.
I bought this book in 1989, just after finishing my finals (in those days I would write the date of purchase inside every book I bought) and decided it was time I got around to reading it -- so I was pleasantly surprised. I noticed that Norman spelt "honour" with a u, and wondered if he had spent time in the UK, but there's no indication in his Wikipedia entry that he did.
I bought this book in 1989, just after finishing my finals (in those days I would write the date of purchase inside every book I bought) and decided it was time I got around to reading it -- so I was pleasantly surprised. I noticed that Norman spelt "honour" with a u, and wondered if he had spent time in the UK, but there's no indication in his Wikipedia entry that he did.
October 8, 2023
Hard to believe that it was published only four years after the release of Easy Rider in 1969. While ER was the ultimate and desperate manifestation of youth ("give me liberty, or give me death!"), Divine Right dude gives up his name and marries into his family to find the Meaning. It starts off well with a watchful redneck sniffing around hippies with whom they eventually make friends, but then DR and Estelle get a little too carried away and stop talking with each other, and that's how the narrative "importance of knowing your roots" takes on momentum. Yet, it's a nice road trip read, mostly because of the characters they meet along the way who are just out there and happy to connect. Wanderers are respected in most cultures, regardless of what their journey is and what they become at sundown.
July 18, 2020
This book has some of the best, most genuine dialogue. Filled with nuance and colloquialisms, the conversations taking place on these pages are engaging even when they aren’t necessarily serving to advance the plot.
The story itself gets bogged down periodically. It’s a book you feel like you can comfortably skip/skim over some parts without losing any connection to the arc.
The story itself gets bogged down periodically. It’s a book you feel like you can comfortably skip/skim over some parts without losing any connection to the arc.
Read
September 4, 2021I read this in its Whole Earth Catalog (1971) form. It appeared in short sections on odd-numbered pages on that 400+ page printing. It was fascinating and enjoyable when I originally read it 50 years ago; seems dated now (the "counterculture" has changed, both in existence and memory), although some comparison to Kerouac's On The Road is justifiable.
January 20, 2026
“Divine Right thought about how a man could go a long way and still be right where he started.”
“Divine Right figured that if you listened long enough, the road would tell you what to do next.”
Good book out there ideas took me rather long to complete because of the randomness but overall pretty solid!!
“Divine Right figured that if you listened long enough, the road would tell you what to do next.”
Good book out there ideas took me rather long to complete because of the randomness but overall pretty solid!!
September 15, 2019
Not my kind of thing
April 20, 2020
This book was given to me as a teenager by a teacher I had. It came at a good time for me and I still enjoy reading it from time to time.
June 23, 2020
This was a Christmas present from a friend.
July 5, 2021
A righteous trip and a gem.
November 27, 2025
Another college book reread!! Loved this one a lot more without the stress of discussion boards, reading checks, and a big essay to write! Cute little counterculture novel with Appalachian themes!
October 12, 2024
I felt like I was on a wild acid trip at first, but then I gradually started to come down and feel more grounded as time went on.
April 7, 2014
Divine Rights trip was much better than I was expecting it to be, at first I thought it was going to be similar to the book Into The Wild but as I read on I realized its much deeper than that. Aside from the constant drug trips Divine right and Chris Mccandless are very similar though. Traveling around America looking for themselves until eventually Chris finds his peace in Alaska and Divine in Kentucky. This book started out with a dark vibe as divine was on drugs and was depressed, but as the story goes on you see how as Divine starts to find himself you start to see and feel his mood change. The writing of this book at first was hard to comprehend but as you read on it starts to make sense. Gurney Norman did a good job incorporating poems into the book that were relevant to what was going on in the story. I'd recommend this to anybody who is interested in the 60s and 70s counterculture
July 4, 2017
This book didn’t quite stack up to my memories of reading it in college during 1970s, but then that would be a steep challenge for any book. It’s stylistically well-crafted and reminiscent of a less mature, more idealistic time.
Favorite quotes:
“Faith, brother! Faith and rabbit shit, that’s the theme!” Divine Right Davenport
“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” The Holy Bible, James 1:8
“The surest test if a man be sane is if accepts life whole, as it is.” Book of Tao, chap. 22
Favorite quotes:
“Faith, brother! Faith and rabbit shit, that’s the theme!” Divine Right Davenport
“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” The Holy Bible, James 1:8
“The surest test if a man be sane is if accepts life whole, as it is.” Book of Tao, chap. 22
August 25, 2009
I read this in the 70's when it was printed in the whole earth catalog. It was pretty good. It would probably make good reading for a young person who needs to hear the message that it's getting to be time to stop partying and get on with life.
September 15, 2015
I read the Prologue by Urge at least 3 times, trying to begin. Then today, I finally felt ready. I read it all in one sitting, maybe afraid I couldn't *get back into* the trip. Final reaction: Far out.
March 23, 2020
I read this book for a southern lit course in college and fell deeply in love with it. On the surface level this book is great, but once you start looking into the symbolism and everything about it this book is amazing. A true work of art.
July 20, 2008
Perhaps the most perfect novel I have ever read...
September 3, 2008
a lost classic, originally published in the lower right corner of the whole earth catalog.
April 25, 2011
If only I could have read it in its original form....
June 25, 2014
Re-read 6/24/14. Awesome.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews