Christopher Dickey - Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son

For Carol, who took me home

Copyright 1998 by Christopher Dickey
All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form
First Touchstone Edition 1999
TOUCHSTONE and colophon are
registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Designed by Edith Fowler
Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Dickey, Christopher
Summer of deliverance: a memoir of father and son / Christopher Dickey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Dickey, JamesFamily. 2. Authors,
American20th centuryFamily relationships.
3. Fathers and sonsUnited States. 4 Dickey,
ChristopherFamily. I. Title
PS3554.I318Z88 1998
811.54dc 21
[B] 98-23452 CIP
ISBN 0-684-84202-5
0-684-85537-2(Pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2959-3

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint material from the following works:

Excerpts of poems, notes, and letters used with the permission of James L. Dickey III.

Excerpts from If There Is No New Dickey, We Will Have to Invent Him, by Joe Cumming Jr., March 2, 1980, 1980 by The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.

Excerpt from Deborah Dickey Gets Two Years Probation, by John Allard, May 1, 1991, 1991 by The State (Columbia, South Carolina). Reprinted with permission from The State.

Excerpts from The Great Grassy World from Both Sides, by Peter Davison, in One of the Dangerous Trades: Essays on the Work and Workings of Poetry, University of Michigan Press, 1991. Reprinted with permission from Peter Davison.

Excerpts from Self-Interviews (1970), Sorties (1971), The Zodiac (1976), and Alnilam (1987), by James Dickey, reprinted with permission of Bantam Doubleday Dell.

(permissions continue on page 288)

Come, son, and find me here,
In love with the sound of my voice.

The Owl King: The Call

Praise for Summer of Deliverance

In this wrenching memoir of his father and himself, Mr. Dickey tells us both the use of a poet and where he was coming from.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

A fascinating description of what its like to be the real child of a man who lives primarily in his imagination.

Susan Cheever, The Washington Post Book World

This beautifully crafted story of the two mens faltering steps toward reconciliation is also the horrific story of all that went before interspersed with moments of love and loyalty.

Polly Paddock Gossett, Chicago Tribune

an acute and affecting portrayal of a lost-and-found relationship between an extraordinary father and his bewildered son.

Earl L. Dachslager, Houston Chronicle

Wrenching, scorching, pedal-to-the-metal. A splendidly recalled, splendidly related reminiscence.

Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times

A not-to-be missed book that is one of the years major publishing events.

New York Post

Scrupulously fair and absolutely riveting, Summer of Deliverance is as fine a literary memoir as Ive seen this year.

Dwight Garner, Newsday

an absolutely riveting story of a family that is both wonderfully and brutally strange.

Cyril Jones Kellett, The San Diego Union-Tribune

A brilliant memoir a father-son odyssey and a classic tale of hubris, self-destruction and redemption.

George Gurley, The Kansas City Star

Dickey writes with a natural storytellers gift for narrative. A frank, unexaggerated account that evokes his long journey from anger to reconciliation with a soft touch and unflagging skill.

Gordon Haber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

a book written with more love and understanding than bitterness pure moments of understanding, of reconciliation.

Elizabeth Bennett, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Often brave and painful admissions of loss, betrayal and lovemostly of love. In the book, the son pays tribute to the father, a tribute borne of unflinching honesty earned through the understanding of a man who was a lot of things to a lot of people.

Christian Viveros-Faune, Raleigh (N.C.) Spectator

by turns angry and elegiac, but always well written and affecting. It is Christopher Dickeys triumph that he is finally able to redeem himself and his difficult, complicated father.

Michael Kelsay, Lexington Herald-Leader

The kind of memoir you can read in a few sittings, 80 to 100 pages at a time. Dickey shows that the truth about a parent lies in listening, understanding and accepting what one learns.

Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It is the measure of Christopher Dickeys own imagination that he neither excuses nor condemns the Great Man, content with a remorselessly detailed, cold-eyed reminiscence that mysteriously emergesyou cant imagine howas a deeply moving portrait and a kind of benediction.

Peter Kurth, Salon Magazine

Christopher Dickeys prose elevates this searingly honest book to a higher plane. A most compelling book.

Charles Sermon, The State (Columbia, S.C.)

In the rich, heartbreaking literature that deals with the subject of fathers and sons, Christopher Dickey has produced a book that is a high-water mark in the genre. Because of this book, we now know that James Dickey produced a son worthy of his poems and novels.

Pat Conroy

I knew, and valued highly, Christopher Dickeys father and mother. Scalding as his account of their lives may seem, it ultimately awards them the redemption they earnedthe deep comprehension and eventual gratitude of a son who is both a keen-eyed witness and a writer with the gifts for telling their story.

Reynolds Price

By turns droll and heartbreaking, Christopher Dickeys beautifully written narrative is not only the portrait of a great poet in the throes of self-ruination but an unflinchingly honest self-portrait as well.

William Styron

ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER DICKEY
Innocent Blood: A Novel
Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran
With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua

I thought that I could save my fathers life.

For most of twenty years I did not see him, couldnt talk to him, could not bear to be around him. I believedI knewthat he had killed my mother. He belittled and betrayed her, humiliated her and forgot about her, then watched her over the course of a few years quietly, relentlessly poison herself with the whisky she had at her right hand all day long every day until she died, bloated, her liver hardening and the veins in her esophagus erupting, bleeding to death at the age of fifty.