AUSTIN, Texas — Christopher Dickey, Newsweek’s bureau chief in Paris and son of poet and novelist James Dickey, will speak at The University of Texas at Austin Monday (Sept. 21) at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
Dickey, author of the recently published Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son, will talk about the excitement and pain of growing up in the household of a genius who was, by turns, a loving father and an alcoholic tyrant. After the making of the movie, Deliverance, based on James Dickey’s novel, the whole family began to disintegrate under the weight of fame, according to his son. James Dickey died in 1997 at the age of 73.
Dickey’s talk, titled “Prodigal Father, Prodigal Son,” begins at 7 p.m. in the fourth floor auditorium of the HRC. It is sponsored by the Plan II Honors Program and is the subject of its 1998 Julius and Suzan Glickman Lecture. There will be a reception with Dickey, the Glickmans and UT President Larry R. Faulkner at 5:30 p.m. in the Tom Lea Room, third floor, HRC.
Christopher Dickey left his tumultuous home life with his father to become a foreign correspondent covering wars in Central America and the Middle East. He also is the author of two previous nonfiction books, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua and Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran, and a novel, Innocent Blood.
