SYNOPSIS

"The letters are an important cataloging of American literary history. . . . The commentaries that Van Ness intersperses throughout the text make The One Voice of James Dickey far more than a collection of letters. The work is astute biography and adept scholarship and critical analysis. . . . The art is not all Dickey￯﾿ﾽs; it represents Van Ness￯﾿ﾽs genius as well, a moving, wellwritten and researched scholarly text that should be placed alongside the earlier edition of letters by every reader seriously interested in American literature."￯﾿ﾽSue Walker

This book completes and complements the first volume of the letters and life of James Dickey. Picking up where the previous volume left off, The One Voice of James Dickey: His Letters and Life, 1970￯﾿ﾽ1997 chronicles Dickey￯﾿ﾽs career from the unparalleled success of his novel Deliverance in 1970 through his poetic experimentation in such books as The Eye Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy and Puella until his death in 1997. A prolific correspondent, Dickey tried to write at least three letters a day, and these letters provide a unique way for Gordon Van Ness to portray the vast and varied panorama of Dickey￯﾿ﾽs life.