Vision Quest (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Vision Quest
title_orig =
translator =


author = Terry Davis
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Young Adult
publisher = Delacorte Books for Young Readers; New Ed edition (May 2005)
release_date = 1979
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 256 pp
isbn = ISBN 978-0-385-73274-1
preceded_by =
followed_by = If Rock & Roll Were a Machine

"Vision Quest" is a young adult novel written by Terry Davis. It was first published in 1979 and has now had a several new edition re-releases (May 2002 and May 2005).

Review Quotes

*“Honest and funny and altogether true to life . . . about people so thoroughly decent and attractive that one wants to reach out and embrace them all.”–Jonathan Yardley, Sports Illustrated

*“Move over, Rocky. Here’s Louden in a sunny and deft novel for lovers of wrestling, wit, and hang-loose talent.”–Kirkus Reviews

*“The truest novel about growing up since THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.”–John Irving

*“In terms of sheer charm, it would be difficult to match the characters in this first novel. Told with tenderness and set in the beauty of Washington State, the novel is most memorable for clearly evoking, much as Judy Blume does, a certain stage of growing up.”–Publishers Weekly

Additional Info

*"Vision Quest" was made into a 1985 movie of the same title, starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino.

*"NEW (2002) Vision Quest Foreword" by Chris Crutcher:

If there hadn't been a Vision Quest there may very well have not been a Chris Crutcher - not a Chris Crutcher, The Author, that is. I met Terry Davis in the fall of 1965 at Eastern Washington State College, where he was a freshman and I was a sophomore. From that time I knew he would be a writer. He seemed single minded in that quest and though these days it's hard to open my car door without hitting some writer whose manuscript is a chapter or two from completion, or who simply needs the right agent and/or publisher, Terry was clearly the real thing. He trained himself. He read, he talked stories, he was unashamed in his passion.

Coincidence brought us together again in the early and mid-seventies when he was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and I was teaching in, and later directing, a small alternative school across the bay in Oakland. Each week we would meet for a five or six mile run followed by a meal and a few beers, and Terry would give me one more chapter from a book he hoped to publish about a high school wrestler named Louden Swain. He would consider my responses to his work, wisely dump most of them, and return the following week with a more polished, funnier, more poignant, more powerful chapter.

A few years and many rejection slips later, Terry burst onto the literary scene with a celebrated piece of literature that remains to this day a bible for many high school wrestling coaches and their charges. It is a tough, funny, gritty, wise tale about a young man who refuses to take life on anyone's terms but his own. He doesn't just turn and stand to face what life throws at him, he creates his challenges.

I couldn't be happier that Vision Quest has come back into print. It should never have been out of print for a day. It's a book that tells the truth, through the eyes of an admittedly flawed and sometimes confused character, from the pen of an admittedly flawed and sometimes confused human being, and because of that makes a connection to us all. This may be a wrestling coach's bible, but it is a human story, far transcending the backdrop of the high school wrestling scene. It is as true in 2002 as it was in 1979. Welcome back, Terry Davis.

Awards and nominations

*"Vision Quest" - ALA Best Books for Young Adults, 1980
*"Vision Quest" - New York Public Library Best Books for the Teen Age, 1980
*"Vision Quest" - ALA Best Books for Young Adults In the Last Quarter Century, 1995