SOURCE: Calhoun, Richard J. “‘His Reason Argues with His Invention’: James Dickey's Self-Interviews and The Eye-Beaters.” South Carolina Review 3, no. 2 (June 1971): 9-16.

In the following essay, Calhoun surveys the weakness in Dickey's Self-Interviews and The Eye-Beaters.

James Dickey's first novel, Deliverance, was such a phenomenal success that anything else he produced in 1970 must by comparison seem rather neglected. Early last year he published his sixth volume of poems, a slim paperback with one of the most ungainly titles in the history of American publishing—The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy. Then just as the excitement over Deliverance was abating, a third 1970 volume, Self-Interviews, appeared, simpler in its title but unique in its conception. It seems that Dickey had agreed to expound via the tape recorder on a series of topics outlined for him by two young teachers, Barbara and James Reiss, who feel that they have...