Alnilam [Hardcover]

James Dickey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 1987

In the early days of World War II, a blind man sets off in search of the son he never knew, a charismatic Air Force pilot supposedly killed in a training accident. His odyssey leads to the secret heart of a "higher military"--sustained by heroism and a fanatical devotion to flight. By the author of Deliverance.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dickey's second novel, 17 years after the great success of Deliverance, is by no means such a clear winner. It is a massive, ambitious, flawed book with many passages of breathtaking grandeur in both the conception and the writing, but with a puzzling hollowness at its center and moments of of melodrama that seem to have been created with an action movie in mind. The story is slight for a book of these imposing dimensions, and is clearly only an excuse for Dickey to work out a series of often profound, sometimes merely glib ruminations on the mysteries of flight, the nature of war, male bonding, the mystique of leadership and, above all, the starkly contrasting worlds of vision and blindness. Frank Cahill, the rather hazily conceived protagonist, is a newly blind man who journeys with his faithful but ferocious dog Zack to a WW II Air Corps training base in North Carolina where his son Joel has just been reported killed in an accident. He has never seen Joel, having separated from his mother before his birth, but as he goes around the base talking to officers and his son's fellow cadets, a strange picture begins to emerge: of a brilliant, charismatic student who has amassed a cult following called Alnilam (named after a key star in celestial navigation). Alnilam, a group difficult to take seriously, offers him dark hints about Joel's death, and has this scheme . . . . But plot, as noted, is not the novel's strong point. Dickey always writes like the poet he is, and his evocations of the blind man's world of breath, air, sound and movement, of the mysteries of flight, of somber winter landscapes, are hallucinatory in their power. (One experiment, howeverthe running of Cahill's sensations and the visible world in parallel columns on the page at certain momentsis merely awkward.) The characters, except for the base commander, are seldom very convincing, but their talk is a haunting blend of eloquence and rough country speech. There are two harrowingly violent climaxes and a real Hollywood close. Alnilam is by no means an easy read, but for those who persevere there are the very real rewards of a vastly talented author extending himself and creating a world few writers could even imagine.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 682 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (May 5, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385065493
• ISBN-13: 978-0385065498
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,144,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Twenty Years Later, August 29, 2006

By 

Dan J. Dunn (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Alnilam (Hardcover)

I read this book when it first came out and I was disappointed. But it has a weird way of lingering in the mind. Of all the books I have ever read, I have spent more time thinking about this one than any book other than "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"-- which it doesn't really resemble (well, it is about a father and a son, so I suppose it does resemble it). What was Dickey trying to accomplish? I wonder if I'll ever know. I really would like to do something, though. Someday I want to write the screenplay...I'm kidding. No I'm not. I want to make this book into a movie. FADE IN: Exterior-Night, in the clouds. Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" plays in the background. A strange, marionette-like flying machine resembling the Wright Bros. contraption drifts throught the clouds towards the camera. At the controls is a very young man wearing a stylized military uniform with a high peaked cap, the letters A L N I L A M appear behind the craft like giant water towers reflecting the searchlights, the fog rolls in to fill the frame and the camera pulls back to reveal the swirling fog transformed into the reflection in the lenses of the dark glasses of FRANK CAHILL...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile challenge to any lover of Dickey's writing, July 19, 2004

By 

Pip "ppsm1" (Abbotsford, British Columbia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alnilam (Hardcover)

Anyone expecting another book like Deliverance will be vastly disappointed. I struggled with this book at first yet I found it had many rewards not offered up by the usual "top ten" hits list of today's pop pulp market. While Dickey fails where someone like Umberto Eco might succeed it is worthwhile to hitch a ride on Dickey's powerful imagination and tough muscular illusory prose. You almost believe a blind man can fly! I'm a sucker for Dickey so became immersed in this book and liked it better than the White Sea which came later and which I found a good cure for insomnia. While Alnilam did not initially "knock me out", I find it staying with me all these years later.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Disappointing., December 28, 2001

By 

"glennmiller3" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alnilam (Hardcover)

I gave up after reading a hundred pages or so. I'm a huge fan of James Dickey. I'd waited for so long for a second book from him and was so disappointed by this. The plot was vague and boring, and it didn't have that wonderful prose which Dickey used in Deliverance.

The one positive I could say about this book is his idea of portraying the blind and sighted versions simultaneously. It didn't work in this. But the 'idea' is to be admired. He always seems to find some way to push the established boundaries of writing.

(He pushes the boundaries again in the last of his novels, 'To The White Sea'. He has no dialogue at all for ninety odd percent of the book. Very successfully, too.)