While he was successful in advertising, he kept writing poetry. Angered by what he perceived as censorship, he went to work for a New York advertising agency, working his way up to an executive position before transferring to an Atlanta firm. In 1956, teaching at the University of Florida, Dickey was in the middle of a controversy over a reading of his poem 'The Father's Body,' which some faculty members considered obscene. On returning from the war Dickey enrolled in Vanderbilt University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in English in 1949 and his master's in 1950.

He claimed that it was while he was in the army that he started writing poetry, although he did not publish any until later. During World War II, Dickey flew nearly a hundred missions in the Pacific. In high school and college, he participated on the football team, but after his first year at Clemson, he enrolled in the Air Corps. Poetry was the main vocation that he claimed, and it was as a poet that he defined himself.ĭickey was born in 1923, in Buckhead, a suburb of Atlanta. Most of all, though, he was a poet, having produced a number of outstanding, award-winning volumes of poetry. He was a soldier, a teacher, a hunter, a novelist, and an advertising executive. James Dickey's life was remarkable for the number of his vocations, any one of which could have kept another person busy for a lifetime.

As he becomes more primitive, Ed finds himself grateful for this opportunity to live life to its fullest.

With sweeping descriptions and precise details, Dickey portrays the development of the novel's narrator, Ed Gentry, as he learns the ways of the forest and the river in his fight for his own survival. Along the way they are accosted by uncivilized backwoods dwellers, and the travelers soon find themselves dealing with murder, a cover-up, and more murder and deceit. In the book, four ordinary suburban men take a canoe trip through the wild hills of north Georgia, hoping to get away from their regulated, sterile lives for a weekend. His novel consists of adventure, suspicion, and murder in a natural setting. Like a poet, Dickey identified themes and images in his novel that resonate throughout the American psyche. These two accomplishments were considered outstanding achievements for a writer who before Deliverance was known for his poetry. Critics and the general public also applauded the movie that was adapted from the novel by Dickey and released two years later. When James Dickey's Deliverance was published in 1970, it was an immediate critical and popular hit.

Aliens Ate My Trousers by Hunt Emerson