From Library Journal
Covering the early 1950s, these six notebooks chart the beginnings of Dickey's development as a poet and fiction writer. Editor Van Ness, a Dickey scholar, has included ideas for stories and poems, explorations of literary techniques, lists of books read, and allusions to various writers. Several of the longer entries?like those on prosody?provide some insight into Dickey's aesthetics, but too many jottings lack sufficient context to yield meaning, the editor's copious notes notwithstanding. Since Dickey wrote in all of the notebooks simultaneously, Van Ness's decision to present each notebook separately does little to unify the volume. Organizing the material around Dickey's major topics (prosody, literary criticism, notes on his own work, etc.) would have provided a more coherent context. Recommended for research-level collections.?William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Book News, Inc.
Van Ness (English, Longwood College, Virginia) provides a detailed look at the artistic beginnings of the American writer James Dickey through a close examination of his six writing notebooks. The entries depict the process by which Dickey developed the ideas and images which would color his later work. An appendix offers Dickey's poems published during the 1950s, as well as ten previously unpublished poems. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Striking In provides the first detailed look at the artistic beginnings of one of America's most accomplished writers. Chronicling James Dickey's close scrutiny of a wide variety of literary, philosophical, and anthropological works, his extensive experimentation with the possibilities of language, and his projected outlines for poems, stories, and novels, the notebooks serve as a critical tool in understanding Dickey's literary apprenticeship during the fifties. Although the notebooks identify the influence of writers such as George Barker, Hart Crane, and Dylan Thomas, they primarily present a man endeavoring to chart his own artistic course or destination. The entries depict the process by which Dickey developed the ideas and images that characterize what he himself has labeled his "early motion," revealing the origin of Into the Stone, Drowning with Others, and Helmets, his first three published books of poetry, and suggesting the material and techniques of later volumes. The introductions by Gordon Van Ness place each notebook in a biographical context and assess its individual significance, and an appendix lists all of Dickey's poems published in the fifties. Extensive footnotes provide further information on many of the specific references within Dickey's entries. Of special importance is the inclusion of ten never-before-published poems as well as fourteen others never previously collected in Dickey's books.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Covering the early 1950s, these six notebooks chart the beginnings of Dickey's development as a poet and fiction writer. Editor Van Ness, a Dickey scholar, has included ideas for stories and poems, explorations of literary techniques, lists of books read, and allusions to various writers. Several of the longer entries-like those on prosody-provide some insight into Dickey's aesthetics, but too many jottings lack sufficient context to yield meaning, the editor's copious notes notwithstanding. Since Dickey wrote in all of the notebooks simultaneously, Van Ness's decision to present each notebook separately does little to unify the volume. Organizing the material around Dickey's major topics (prosody, literary criticism, notes on his own work, etc.) would have provided a more coherent context. Recommended for research-level collections.-William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

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