One minute the world as it is,'' a credo Dickey, who is perhaps best known for his novel ''Deliverance'' but was also the author of some 20 volumes of poetry, observed every time he wrote. As Nietzsche remarked, ''No true artist will tolerate for Besides, this kind of embellishment is very close to what takes place in art. Won without navigators, tail gunners, and so on - everyone was a pilot in those days. Such exaggeration is not unusual, as anyone who grew up around an Air Force base knows. 2 man on the plane, not the one at the controls. Christopher Dickey was nearly 30 before he learned that his father had been a radar operator, or ''intercept officer.'' He'd wonįive bronze stars over the course of 38 combat missions - but as the No. Showman, the brilliant and erratic James Dickey.ĭickey was never a pilot in the Pacific during World War II, although he told everyone he had been. That's what it's like to read ''Summer of Deliverance,'' and one imagines what life must have been like that for its author, son of this country's most outrageous literary Then the plane crashes again,Īnd the nightmare starts over.

Smiling and waving, he walks toward you, and you think you know who it is. He plane crashes, but someone climbs out of the wreckage. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Reviews 'Summer of Deliverance' (August 10, 1998).Featured Subject: James Dickey, with news and reviews from the archives of The New York Times.Audio Special: James Dickey reads from his poetry and 'Deliverance' at the 92nd St.Christopher Dickey discovers the difference between the world as it was and the world as James Dickey said it was.

James dickey's deliverance