James Oliver Curwood Book

James Dickey was a first-class American poet, an impossible person, and a man who took "embroidering the truth" to new lows, or heights, depending on how you look at these things. Hart's biography leaves no stone unturned where it comes to Dickey's drinking, catting around, bullying, betrayals, the utter domestic hell of his two marriages -- one in which he caused great suffering and one in which he suffered greatly -- and his constant lies about virtually everything, from his background to his war record to his achievements. Deception was part and parcel of Dickey, who often seemed to devote his life to the idea that to be a great artist means to be a great liar.

Hart becomes, however, a bit too literal-minded in his approach, such as when he starts pointing out that Dickey's fiction and poems are -- surprise! -- made up. One begins to sense a biographer with an axe to grind, and the portrait that emerges begins to seem a little on the mean-spirited side. For the time being, I guess this is definitive, but it just doesn't feel like the whole picture.