Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son

by Christopher Dickey

Summer of Deliverance is a powerful and moving memoir of anger, love, and reconciliation between a son and his father. Hailed as a literary genius of his generation, James Dickey created his art and lived his life with a ferocious passion. He was a heavy drinker, a destructive husband and father, a poet of grace and sensitivity, and, after the publication and subsequent film of his novel, Deliverance, a wildly popular literary star. Drawing on letters, notebooks, diaries, and his explicit conversations with his father, Christopher Dickey has crafted a superb memoir of the corrosive effects of fame, a moving remembrance of a crisis that united a family, and an inspiring celebration of love between father and son.

Genres: Memoir, Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Southern Gothic, Psychology, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 19, 1998

About the author

Christopher Dickey is a war correspondent, historian, and thriller writer, an authority on terrorism, and a memoirist. He is the Paris-based foreign editor of The Daily Beast, and is a contributor to NBC/MSNBC News. Chris also has been a frequent commentator on CNN, the BBC, and NPR. He was formerly a bureau chief for Newsweek in Paris and Cairo, and for The Washington Post in Central America and the Middle East.

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son by Christopher Dickey (Simon & Schuster 1998) (Biography) is the author and journalist Christopher Dickey's farewell to his father, the Southern writer James Dickey. James Dickey was a brilliant and venerated poet who was best known for his novel Deliverance, which was a tale of survival in the North Georgia woods. For all his accomplishments, James Dickey was a deeply troubled alcoholic who alienated his sons for many years. Christopher Dickey writes that his father finally stopped drinking and found peace in the last years of his life and that his sons found loving closure in their relationships with their old man before he died. My rating: 7/10, finished 5/7/13.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Dickey's Unforgettable Memoir

A powerful and compassionate account of what it was like being James Dickey's son. Sometimes confessional and always told in the grippingly candid voice of a veteran news reporter, this beautiful memoir will provide searing insights into the complexities of Dickey--and how those complexities shaped the family around him. A beautifully written and masterful tale of love, love lost, betrayal, reconciliation, doubt, belief, more betrayal and, finally, a hard-earned (unconventional) peace that comes from acceptance--acceptance of the unconventional love that a father had for his son.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christopher Dickey has every reason to be bitter about his father. He survived. Cannot say I appreciated his critique of Carolina and Columbia. His father chose to be the big man on campus. USC gave him a community. James Dickey no doubt a creative genius and, as Conroy noted in his book MY READING LIFE, it doesn't matter what kind of man he was. Except to his children.

[R B · Rating 4 out of 5]

How anybody could survive in close proximity to the ego of James Dickey is beyond me. Literary genius for sure but judging from this well written memoir also one serious jackass.

[Diann Blakely]

One of the most sensational and best-known examples of the Southern Gothic occurs in James Dickey’s DELIVERANCE, his novel of suburban Atlanta businessmen confronting the wilderness—in both the literal and metaphoric senses of the word—via a weekend river trip. Later adapted for the screen, Deliverance contains graphic scenes of male homosexual rape and a revenge killing, and the tale concludes with a bone-chilling dream sequence. When the film came out in 1972, Yankee reviewers expressed dismay; many Southern ones were embarrassed to death—hadn’t the civil rights era already disgraced the region sufficiently?

Yet Dickey never wrote any fiction as wildly inventive as the lie-enhanced version of his life he told and retold to party guests, reviewers, professors, critics, students, and the multitudinous women he attempted to seduce, often successfully. His first marriage, written about by his son Christopher in the dignified yet unsparing SUMMER OF DELIVERANCE, ended with the melodramatic spectacle of the author’s ill-treated wife, Maxine, drinking herself to death while Dickey swashbuckled his way across the American poetry scene. Soon after Maxine’s demise, Dickey married one of his students, Deborah, whose liking for drugs matched his taste for booze. Dickey’s first definitive biographer, Henry Hart, bluntly terms the match ”a nightmare“—the physically imposing poet was hospitalized at least twice after Deborah attacked him.

It's a good idea, nevertheless, to read this book, also Hart's biography, with two things in mind. First, there's Jeffrey Meyers' critical essay in THE NEW CRITERION, which pinpoints a plenitude of mistakes and inaccuracies--http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.... in Hart's JAMES DICKEY: THE WORLD AS A LIE. Second, we have a caveat from Dickey's own daughter, Bronwen, a respected journalist, i.e. under the command of a vocation requiring an objectivity that trumps family connections every time: "Word the wise on this one: the biography is rife with error. I wouldn't recommend it."

Those who love Dickey's poetry are well-advised to stay away from this memoir and also Hart's biography.







(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It now seems inconceivable that poets once graced the cover of Life and were even invited guests on The Tonight Show, but they did, and James Dickey was a master in the art of performance. Unfortunately, the success of his first novel, Deliverance did nothing but intensify an already insatiable hunger for celebrity—culminating, some would say, in landing the role of the sheriff in the film based on his novel. Dickey had never acted, but after reading this memoir, you realize his whole life was an act. Over fifty years have passed now, and by any modern standard, Dickey would now be automatically considered Exhibit B for toxic masculinity, right after Hemingway. In the era of #MeToo, reading this almost feels like a jolt. If a man like Dickey were still alive in 2023, one can't help but wonder how he'd attempt to navigate the swampy rapids of social media and cancel culture. Something tells me he wouldn't be content to be a minor guest on a Joe Rogan podcast. Go home or go big? At least for Dickey, there'd never be any question. And as we've learned in the land of of celebrity memoirs, it's home which always invariably suffers.

I typically don’t enjoy memoirs, but if you’re a middle-aged educated Southern white male who came of age in the 70s or 80s, it’s impossible to escape the shadow Dickey cast on the landscape. I couldn't resist this. Fifty years later, T-shirts are still being hocked in outdoor gear shops (Paddle Faster, I Hear Banjo Music). Christopher Dickey's account of what it was like, growing up with James Dickey for a father is brutal in places, and surprisingly tender in others. Christopher Dickey was a formidable writer himself, a formidable writer himself, a journalist and overseas bureau chief for Newsweek for many years, and there's plenty of top-notch writing here, not to mention some juicy details on the filming of Deliverance (who knew Burt Reynolds wore flats?). I thoroughly enjoyed this. Not only does Dickey eventually come to terms with his father here, there's also a sort of reckoning and acknowledgement of how truly exploitative Hollywood and Deliverancewas, in denigrating the poorest of Appalachia in its creation of myths which continue to perpetuate. Four stars.

[Sarah Ewald · Rating 4 out of 5]

All I knew of James Dickey was that he wrote 'Deliverance' (a movie that scared the Dickens out of me when I saw it). I had known of Christopher Dickey as a foreign correspondent whom Brian Williams occasionally brought on air for his show, 'The 11th Hour', when he wanted to get the Dickey's take on how the affairs of the USA were playing out in Europe. This book came up as a suggestion of Goodreads books for me to explore.

This was a strangely interesting read, a love story, as you will, from a son to his father, a father who often was so self absorbed that he basked in his own spotlight, often ignoring his family. The elder Dickey came to prominence as a celebrated poet, and once his work caught on, he was lavished with praise for his work. His celebrity enabled him and his family to travel across the United States and in Europe. He is known mostly for his novel, 'Deliverance', which exposed the underbelly of our country's south, and the social misunderstandings that flourished there. It was a runaway best seller of a book, and was soon optioned into a movie. The title of the book references the summer in which the movie was made, but also references the summer of the relationship with the Dickeys, elder and junior.
Sadly, the abuse of alcohol played a major role in this family and its relationships. Late in his father's life, Christopher reached back to his childhood memories to restore the frayed relationship he had with his father, but by the time they reached that point of forgiveness, Jim Dickey's health was on a downward spiral.
This book was truly a love story to is father.

[Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christoper Dickey has written a memoir about the complex and volatile relationship he had with his father, the famous poet James Dickey. Of course, James Dickey is the author of "Deliverance," which provided much of the movie's story by the same name, with a good cast, headed by Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight.

I was familiar with Rabun County before the book's publication because I had backpacked the Appalachian Trail portion that runs through Georgia and North Carolina. But I didn't know anything about the Chattooga River until reading the book and then seeing the movie. The week after I saw the movie, I booked a reservation for a trip down Section IV of the river, the most challenging part, and a week after that, another trip when the water level was high just after a good rain. Eventually, I purchased a home in the county and lived there for thirteen years. I have the perspective of those who have enjoyed the book and the movie, and the perspective of the "locals" in the county, many of whom believe that the elder Dickey did a gross disservice to the county with the story, particularly the movie, which was quite graphic in one place that was not complimentary to many of the residents. Many of them hated the movie and have nothing good to say about it or James Dickey.

Read "Deliverance," watch the movie, then read this book. It's a fascinating trip.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 4 out of 5]

While James Dickey was admirable for his writing, the son deserves way more praise for his dignified conduct throughout his own adult life, living a life that was and is the polar opposite of his father's. The elder Dickey was an alcoholic and a self-absorbed person whom, in his dying days, with whom the sons attempted a reconciliation. They had a little sister, age 13 at the time, whom they were at last able to get to know and to shelter. The story of alcoholism and the way it sent a wrecking ball through the family was, frankly, appalling and so preventable. I was left with distinct admiration for the son as well as sadness for what could have been.
The elder Dickey wrote the book Deliverance, later made into a 1972 movie. Some scenes (in book and movie) were too uncomfortable to read or to watch.

[Elizabeth Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complex subject, the relationship between son and father. Christopher Dickey did a great job here exploring and explaining the dysfunction of his family, especially with regard to the boss man, James. It's hard to reconcile the nasty jackass James Dickey with the tremendously sensitive poet James Dickey. Well, alcohol is a powerful force of destruction for so many. RIP both of these guys.

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about James Dickey by his son Christopher. I like James dickey's books, but after reading this, I don't think I would have liked James Dickey the man. It is a very honest book and does not hide the bad but also honest in talking about the son's perspective of his father.

[Deena Santori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a beautiful book. Painful past to healing.

[Michael-david Kerns]

An extraordinary & uncomfortable read--& journey of revelation. Om mani padme hum, Christopher Dickey.

[Atar Hadari · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sometimes disturbing, finally somewhat lightweight book. I read it with considerable engagement but had no difficulty giving it away, being quite certain I would not reread it.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense family story.

[Paul Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional memoir. At times harrowing, at times sad, at times uplifting. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I snagged this book on the give away shelf at the Port Orange library, a place that inspires hope and appreciation for the state of Florida.

The book is a erudite memoir by Mr. Chris Dickey, about his father, a successful poet and writer of the novel Deliverance, which became the well known movie, and sent his father into more fame and dinero.

His father was a drinker who progressed into an intolerable ass. His mother also was a boozer, she died in her fifties, never able to leave the situation.

I was okay with the book but not enthralled. Perhaps I am just cold towards daddy love. It's different for boys, I know. But he is a grown man who admits he neglects his own kid, and writes this memoir which is about his father's life as much as his own.

After years of little contact, when his father is broken mess, the author spends time helping out, cleaning, dealing, etc.., and gets some intel to write this.

I know of the movie deliverance, but have not seen it. There is a scene with a dude getting raped --a big deal (since it never happens?). I cannot but feel there is an underlying attitude that women (and girls) are here to be raped, but not males. Which is not the author's point and of view, but the movie was a big deal in their lives, so he has too talk about it....

Anyway it is well written, so if you care about the subject, you will love it. If you don't care so much, you will like it okay.

[Mark Marinovich]

“Summer of Deliverance,” published in 1998, is a beautifully written slog. I’m giving it 5 stars for vivid and soulful writing but geesh, author Christopher Hickey’s utterly intimate account of his fraught relationship with his father, a heralded poet, uneven author, possible genius, egomaniac and alcoholic, who Christopher variously describes as “Jim,” “James” and “my father” in his memoir (I never caught on to the underlying meaning of the variation but I *think* it was intentional), is no frolic in the Appalachian wilderness. I picked up the book shortly after Christopher’s death in July 2020 when I read glowing tributes to his generous editorial mentorship by scores of grateful young writers. I was also aware of his coverage of all manner of international events including on-the-ground reportage in multiple war-torn hotspots over the years. I was more curious about Christopher's life story than his father’s, who had his 15 minutes when a popular movie based on his novel “Deliverance” splashed onto the scene in the early 1970s. Jim/James/my father was stinting in his praise of and attention to sensitive Christopher until his dying days. In many ways, the pinball trajectory of Christopher’s own meandering and often reckless life was a transparent reaction to his father’s withheld love and alcohol-fueled narcissism. Now that that's done, I look forward to enjoying reading again.

[Karen]

yes,it is about the movie "Deliverance" at least somewhat:
James Dickey wrote the movie and has his son wrote this book about what it was like to live with his dad during that time and beyond. strong visuals for me about his dad's alcoholism and later years up to death.

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a journey of father and son coming full circle. It was okay.

[David Buhler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent^10

[Mills College Library]

811.54 D551s 1998