Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On his kayak journey down the Los Angeles River (“The Same River Twice”, page 46), Bill Donahue survived a dunking in its foul waters, an encounter with a Charles Manson look-alike, and a near beheading by a wire strung across the river. His seriocomic odyssey sent us in search of other works where an idyllic river trip falls prey to the undertow. —Alastair Paulin


Deliverance
John Boorman. 109 minutes. Warner hrothers, 1972. It’s all banjo music and alpha-male hijinks at first, as Burt Reynolds leads three weekend warriors down Georgia’s Cahulawassee River. Reynolds laments that this will be his last river run before the state dams it and “rapes this whole goddamn landscape.” Of course, the landscape isn’t the only thing about to be raped, as a run-in with inhred mountain men crushes the foursome’s notions of backwoods authenticity.

“Burn On”
Randy Newman.
Warner Brothers, 1972.

Over a deceptively pretty melody, Newman spins a tale of grandeur about Ohio’s urban waterway, singing: “There’s a red moon rising, on the Cuyahoga River.” The line “Cleveland, city of light, city of magic” even sounds believable, until the refrain — “Burn on, big river, burn on” — reveals the ballad as a dark-humored memorial to the day the oily Cuyahoga went up in flames.

Shooting the Boh
By Tracy Johnston.
Vintage Books, 1992.

Johnston jumps at an invitation to join a crack rafting team making the virgin run of the Boh River in Borneo. But she quickly learns why locals fear the evil river spirit: Her voyage is cursed by sweat-sucking bees, terrifying rapids, and the onset of menopause. Johnston survives nonetheless, and writes of her travails with grace and good humor.

Old Glory
By Jonathan Raban. Penguin, 1982.
Full of Huck Finn dreams, Raban sets out to discover the heart of America by floating down the Mississippi in a 16-foot aluminum boat. But after surviving whirlpools, a near collision with a tugboat, and his own nautical incompetence, Raban’s misanthropic Englishman persona takes over. He still loves the river’s mythic soul, but views our nation’s small-town folk with jaundiced affection.

Hearts of Darkness
Fax Bahr and Eleanor Coppola. 96 minutes.
Paramount, 1992.

In this documentary about the making of the Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, the ambitious Francis Ford Coppola and his stoned cast venture upriver in the Philippines. But the mood quickly darkens as the shoot is disrupted by no less than a typhoon and a Communist insurgency. In the end, Coppola compares his production to the American war effort: “We had … too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate