ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993                   TAG: 9302050224
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WILLIAM W. STARR KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C.                                LENGTH: Medium


JAMES DICKEY TURNS 70 WITH BURST OF CREATIVITY

James Dickey, who turned 70 on Tuesday, recalls with a laugh the words of another aging man: "He said he used to keep a little black book, which had the names of girls in it. Now he still has a black book, but it's full of the names of doctors."

Dickey, internationally acclaimed for his poetry and the author of three novels including "Deliverance," celebrated his birthday quietly, telling an early morning visitor, "The Bible gives you three score and ten, so I'm starting in on borrowed time. I do hope my credit is good."

His credit is good, and so is his creative life. But the body . . . well, the body has picked up a few aches and pains along the way.

"You want the list? I've got esophageal problems resulting from some major surgery I had for a hiatal hernia in Seattle in 1980. Nothing would go down my gullet. You can die of hunger or thirst. And God, it's a savage operation - it's like getting hit by a truck - and the doctors can't completely correct it, so I have to go back to the hospital for outpatient surgery every few months.

"And I've got a bad back. I was born with one extra vetebra, and it affects a sciatic nerve in my leg, and sometimes it just shuts down on me. But who wants to go on and on about all that?"

More to the point, perhaps, is the sense of Indian summer in the recent burst of creativity from Dickey's imaginative mind.

Uppermost is his third novel, now completed, and scheduled for publication in September. "To the White Sea" is a book the author is clearly proud of.

In a conversation with his son Christopher, who called from Paris to wish his father a happy birthday, he described it as "a book I like a lot. A page-turner." And movie producers already are interested.

The novel takes place in Japan in the final days of World War II when the United States was firebombing Tokyo. The hero (though Dickey says he's "almost a complete sociopath") is a tail gunner on a B-29 bomber which has been shot down on a raid and who is trying to survive on the ground.

The themes of the loner, the man struggling to survive in and with nature and the war setting will be familiar for readers of Dickey's poetry and prose, writings which have won him shelves full of awards and honors including a National Book Award and membership in this country's highest cultural body, the Academy and Institute of American Arts and Letters.

"He is America's greatest living writer. Certainly its greatest living poet," says Dr. Matthew Bruccoli, a friend, literary scholar and publisher and colleague in the University of South Carolina English department.

"He still has the ability to retain the knowledge of a book he picked up only once 20 years ago and bring it up instantly. In my life I've never known anyone like him. He is a genius," Bruccoli adds.

For Dickey, his 70th birthday was a mix of the usual and the unexpected. As usual, he went to class at South Carolina. In the last 24 years there, he's taught over 1,000 students, some of whom have gone on to write and publish on their own. "The names I forget; them, I remember," he says.

Dickey was the guest of honor at a surprise luncheon with a birthday cake thrown for him by several close friends in the English Department. USC President John Palms also showed up. Later in the afternoon, many of Dickey's former students came by his suburban Columbia home to wish him well as he celebrated with his family, wife Deborah and daughter Bronwen, 12.

"I have finally arrived at the beginning as of today," Dickey said during a morning interview at his home.

"When you get to my age, you stop and think, `What are the advantages of being my age? What accrues to me because I'm now 70?' The answer is, nothing.

"But then when you think deeper about it you realize the payoff to getting older is finally being able to do something it took you your whole life to do. . . . You can draw on your experience. The reward is mastery, maybe only to a small degree, but a mastery nonetheless.

"I can now make decisions about my own writing. There are no more judges. Only me."

Still, Dickey is aware of the inexorable clock.

"There are a thousand things I want to do. The more I do now, the more the celestial wire responds. But time will permit me only some of those things. I've got to make the choices, but that's fine. Making my own decisions is another one of the payoffs," he says.

Dickey has been asked many times about producing a sequel to "Deliverance," his hugely successful 1970 novel later made into a popular movie. There are recent rumors that actor Burt Reynolds, who appeared in the film, is preparing to offer a substantial sum to Dickey for such a project.

"No way. It's not a possibility," Dickey says bluntly.



by Archana Subramaniam by CNB