Customer Reviews

Divine Right's Trip : A Novel of the Counterculture

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I originally read this novel as "serialized" in the Whole Earth Catalog. They put each short chapter, sometimes only a few paragraphs, in a narrow column on every-other page of the catalog. I'll bet I've read this book four times.

Divine Right's Trip is so intensely, so honestly human that it hurts. Stick out your thumb and hitch a ride with hippie Divine Right and his girlfriend, Estelle as they bump along in Urge, D.R.'s psychedelically-painted VW bus.

To read this book is to trip. For those of you who haven't tripped, the sensation was summed up well by the very friend who bought me that Whole Earth Catalog 'way back then. He admits to "dropping acid" back in the late 60's. He told me once that tripping is like sneaking into the circus by crawling under the tent: Sometimes you get the clowns, sometimes you get the lions.

And that reminds me of something Divine Right read, written on a bathroom wall somewhere along his trip: (paraphrasing) "There are nights when the wolves are silent and the moon is howling."

Just read the book.

--LW

Anyone who wants to know how to overcome the trappings of this shallow materialistic world and become a free and uplifted person, look no further. Divine Right is the most honest, soulful, lovable character that I have ever encountered in literature, and his struggles with family and identity should hit home with anyone who has ever had to rethink their view of self. I read this book once and had to read it again and again and again...I am a better person for it. Norman's descriptions of Kentucky are so perfect, and anyone who's never met the Greek in one form or another should definitely get ahold of this book ASAP!

This is a classic piece of American history. For those of us who were fortunate to live in the 60's, it will make you cry and it will make you laugh out loud. For younger readers, take a trip with Gurney back to a time when everything of the fertile mind was possible and "far-out". My favorite character: "The Lone Outdoorsman". Enjoy the ride and arrive alive!

I never heard of the guy - Gurney. I never read the Whole Earth Catalog. I did go to Whole Earth Stores when they were in Berkeley. Well, anyway, this is a great book that takes you back to the late 60's. But it is not out of place for the 80's either. I lived in Santa Cruz, then, and many of the same ideas were still burning. I particularly loved the ending and the meeting of the minds - as it were. There is a lull at about 70% in, but maybe that was me. It was worth reading through it. If you believe that the power is in the ideas, you will love this book. If you believe that the power lies with institutions, I advise you to look elsewhere.

The counter culture was never meant to appeal to accountants.

Like so many others, I read this novel on the pages of the Whole Earth Catalog. The only difference was that I was only 16 at the time, sitting in the back of my parent's VW microbus, driving through Mexico on our way to be missionaries in Guatemala. To be honest, I'll have to read the book again to remember a lot of it, but it introduced me to a whole new (adult) world I knew almost nothing about--and I'll never forget its impact on me (obviously as the daughter of missionaries I'd been a bit sheltered). I still don't know if my parents knew what the "novel" was on the pages of the Whole Earth Catalogue--but they were into what the catalogue was about, and I certainly was absorbing what D.R. was about (though even at that time, I felt more for D.R.'s girlfriend--the scene where they each think about the other, "I ostensibly love you" was an eye-opener for me at 16. Anyway, I think of that novel as a turning point in my life.

Like many others, I read this book as it was printed in the Whole Earth Catalog. It instantly pulled me in, and I was curious about the author and where this crazy book came from, seemingly out of nowhere. Well, as a young man reading it today (on the verge of 2010) I find its impact is no less than what I'd imagine when it came out almost 40 years ago. Others should discover and rediscover Divine Right's Trip, so it can truly be appreciated as the classic of that era that it is. At a point in time that I felt disillusioned, it allowed me to be inspired by literature once again.

I read Divine Right's Trip in the edges of the Whole Earth Catalog back in '71 & never forgot it. Here I am in 2009 at Amazon looking for it again.
Reading it is well worth the time.
I've owned 8 VW buses since I read about Urge and the trip DR took in him... I wonder if the story has something to do with the buses? I drive a bus today.
Maybe it was just me.... No matter, it's time to read Divine Right's Trip again.

Divine Right Davenport, David Ray Collier, or D.R. for short lead the way for me to peer through his eyes and feel every emotion that forced its way through his soul continuing through mine. Gurney Norman is an author to be envied and one that I am sure to never forget. After finishing the book and digesting the information brought forth in the Afterword, I have an increased invaluable respect for Norman; I felt connected to him and his family, his friends, and his coworkers. This is a must-read for the soul. To silence your dragon within and find your Estelle. How beautiful and perfect her soul was. To travel the open road with Urge and his wonderfully tattooed skin. But most of all, to be hippy, I mean to be happy. OM MANI PADME HUM - David Moya, www.BlueprintPublishing.com

Norman weaves a richly vivid tale about the travails of D.R. Davenport. It is not just the story of a youth's journey across America in the 60's, but also the tale of a young man's journey to grow and mature. As one reads this wonderful book one will see the genius of Norman and become engrossed in his prose. Norman has written a wonderful edition to this genre of literature. Read this book and one will see a strong link to Salinger and Kerouac. It is a shame Norman has not produced more.

I read the original Whole Earth Catalog version of DR's trip. Actually, a lot of it was read aloud to me by my wife during trips to the beach when we lived in Managua, Nicaragua, in the '70s. Often, on a Sunday morning, we would pack up our beach stuff into my wife's little Datsun 100A, light up some homegrown sinsemilla and drive a very curvy road over and down hills to the Pacific. The memories of those trips are vivid and very pleasant, not least because of DR's own trip. This was a perfect story for those times. I also loved the Great American Outdoorsman, what a character! I'm definitely planning to get the book and re-read it.

... now it's been a few months since I wrote the above paragraph. I can report that I enjoyed re-reading the book as much as, or perhaps more than, the first time. I think this time I could appreciate the author's stylistic skill even more. The perspective that only time can provide actually improved my enjoyment this time around. I highly recommend it to anyone who lived through those crazy days, and to anyone who wants to know what many in my generation experienced.