“Happy Vagrancy is in many ways about essays themselves—essays as means of thinking, means of gathering, and offering nuggets of thought. These essays break into song and story, but they are not bound by tune or plot. There is something about them—a radiance—beyond structure, arc, or conclusion.”—Philip Brady, author of By Heart: Reflections of a Rust Belt BardThe essays in Sam Pickering’s new collection sing with thoughtful observations on life, death, love, and ...

He roams New England, Arkansas, the Caribbean, Nova Scotia and the familiar and odd plots of mind and thought. He explores shorelines and climbs “hillish” mountains. He sits on porches and talks to passersby and their dogs. He meets strange and delightful people, most of whom are real. “Reading Pickering,” a reviewer wrote in The Smithsonian decades ago, “is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend.” “Now,” Pickering says, “I am old, and the friends who thought me witty have fa...

Praise for Sam Pickering:"Pickering has all of Thurber's humor, and he writes as well as E. B. White. He writes with passion, wit, and a strange personal note of self-mockery; he is humanely educated, wise, and capable of a wide range of stylistic effects."----Jay Parini". . . he writes in the tradition of Montaigne hammering together a ramshackle affair of surprising nooks, crannies and additions-all under the same roof."---The Oxford American

Tales of meandering walks through Scotland's capital by an essayist known for "often hilarious, sometimes poignant, takes on life" ( The New York Times).After a forty-year absence from the city, Sam Pickering—author, literary scholar, and inspiration for the lead character in Dead Poets Society—came to the University of Edinburgh on a fellowship in 2004. Edinburgh Days maps the transition from his life in Connecticut, defined by family, a...

Essays in which happiness becomes a magic carpet, lifting readers above momentary fret and making the ordinary appears wondrousSweeping in and out of real and imagined places, Dreamtime highlights the curious character of an unconventional teacher, writer, traveler, husband, and father as he takes stock of his multifaceted life. Sam Pickering—the inspiration for the main character in Dead Poets Society—guides us on a journey through his reflections on reti...

Last year Sam Pickering announced that he’d written his final word. “I intend to sit in a chair at the edge of the driveway and on sunny days doze through hours waking up occasionally to identify birds on the feeder. My hands and lap will be empty, and I won’t worry about a wind scattering papers across the yard.” Three days later Mike a college classmate wrote him. “Given all the books you have written, it makes me sad to hear that you have written your last book. Please remember what mig...

Alexander Smith stated that a good essayist needed “an ability to discern the infinite suggestiveness of common things.” Arthur Benson seconded the idea, saying an essayist needed a “far-ranging curiosity.” For three decades Sam Pickering has written essays, his words rolling in a fine frenzy over ordinary life discovering the marvelous and the absurd. His curiosity ranges, but it also rumpuses and rollicks. He wanders the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, rural Connecticut, farmland in Nova S...

Familiar essays by Sam Pickering, who has written more than thirty books and barrows of articles. When not at his desk, he was in the classroom, the last thirty-five years teaching English at the University of Connecticut.

Praise for Sam Pickering:"The art of the essay as delivered by Mr. Pickering is the art of the front porch ramble."---The New York Times Book Review"Reading Pickering . . . is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend."---Smithsonian"What a joy it is to 'mess around' with Professor Sam Pickering!"---The Chattanooga Times"Pickering is a barefoot observer of the quotidian who revels in the spectacle an...

This summer Sam Pickering and his wife Vicki attended a pro-fessional wrestling match in a small arena in Nova Scotia. They sat in folding chairs on the front row. They ate “Montreal Sausages” drowning in ketchup and awash with onions. They cheered heroes and laughed at villains. In the middle of one match, a naughty wrestler leaned over the ropes and staring at Sam, said, “If you keep laughing that hard, old-timer, you’ll have a heart attack.” “What?” Sam said to Vicki. “Old-timer? Not me...

errible Sanity is wondrous sanity. Pickering’s essays are acetaminophen for hippish days. “Life doesn’t have a neat beginning and a tidy end,” Roger, a character in V. S. Naipaul’s Half a Life, says. “Life is always going on.” In this collection, Pickering depicts the joy and sadness of life’s going on. Great knowledge often brings small pleasure while the small knowledge that all people experience brings great pleasure. A dental hygienist tells him that every day patients greet her on the...

"Terrible Sanity is wondrous sanity. Pickering's essays are acetaminophen for hippish days. "Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end," Roger, a character in V. S. Naipaul's Half a Life, says. "Life is always going on." In this collection, Pickering depicts the joy and sadness of life's going on. He observes that great knowledge often brings small pleasure while the small knowledge that all people experience brings great pleasure. A dental hygienist tells him that every day patien...