James Dickey Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Gordon Van Ness

Critical Essay by Gordon Van Ness

SOURCE: Van Ness, Gordon. “Other Prose: Jericho, God's Images, Wayfarer, and Southern Light.” In Outbelieving Existence: The Measured Motion of James Dickey, pp. 101-11. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House. 1992.

In the following essay, Van Ness surveys the central thematic concerns of and the critical reaction to Dickey's nonfiction.

In a 1974 article discussing his efforts and those of painter Hubert Shuptrine to produce a major book about the South, Dickey declares,

I want to write how it feels to be in this place, the South. The essence of it. The mood of it. How it feels to be there on the coast … to go there today and stand looking out over the marshes. And why it feels that way. Every place has its own quality of strangeness. Which is really uniqueness. That's what we want to capture. In paintings and words. The feeling of places.

(Logue 186)

Jericho: The...
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