James Dickey: The World as a Lie

A fascinating biography of one of the most popular, colorful, and notorious American poets of our century.

The legendary Southern poet James Dickey never shied away from cultivating a heroic mystique. Like Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway, he earned a reputation as a sportsman, boozer, war hero, and womanizer as well as a great poet, novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. But James Dickey made lying both a literary strategy and a protective camouflage; even his family and closest friends failed to distinguish between the mythical James Dickey and the actual man. Henry Hart sees lying as the central theme to Dickey's life; and in this authoritative, immensely entertaining biography he delves deep behind Dickey's many masks. Letters, anecdotes, tall tales and true ones, as well as the reluctant but finally candid cooperation of Dickey himself animate Hart's narration of a remarkable life.

Readers of Dickey's National Book Award-winning poetry, his bestselling novel Deliverance, and anyone who witnessed his electrifying readings of his work will savor this book.


About the Author
Henry Hart is the author of critical books on Seamus Heaney, Robert Lowell, and Geoffrey Hill, as well as two books of poetry. Hart is a professor of English at the College of William & Mary, and lives in Virginia.