The Best of Pickering

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 "Pickering has the natural essayist's intimate yet distanced take on the world that combines a devotion to particulars . . . with a near-indifference to the status- and achievement-mongering that marks modern life." ---Publishers Weekly "Pickering writes with the sensitivity and craft of a poet, finding meaning in the commonplace and ordinary." ---Library Journal "Pickering's genre is unique, but I'm not sure anyone else can write this stuff. I can live with that, as long as Pickering himself continues to wend through the forests, classrooms, airports, billiards championships, hometown parades, and his inner world of Tennessee gags and characters." ---Hartford Courant His writing is as unique and recognizable as the music of Mozart, the painting of Picasso, or the poetry of Dickinson. Yet most Americans likely know Sam Pickering, the University of Connecticut English professor, from the movie Dead Poets Society. In the film, Robin Williams plays an idiosyncratic instructor---based on Pickering---who employs some over-the-top teaching methods to keep his subjects fresh and his students learning. Fewer probably know that Pickering is the author of more than 16 books and nearly 200 articles, or that he's inspired thousands of university students to think in new ways. And, while Williams may have captured Pickering's madcap classroom antics, he didn't uncover the other side of the author-Sam Pickering as one of our great American men of letters. The Best of Pickering amply demonstrates Pickering's amazing powers of perception, and gives us insight into the mind of a writer nearly obsessed with turning his back on the conventional trappings of American success-a writer who seems to prefer lying squirrel's-eye-level next to a bed of daffodils in the spring or trespassing on someone else's property to pursue a jaunt through joe-pye weed and goldenrod. Indeed, Pickering's philosophy, at least on paper, may very well be "Now is the only time." If you haven't met Sam Pickering before, prepare to be surprised and delighted by these wry and sometimes self-deprecating essays that are witty and elegant and concrete yet wander widely, and include Pickering's well-trod fictional Southern town of Carthage, Tennessee, full of strange goings-on. This definitive collection of the best of Pickering is a must for Pickering fans and a fine introduction for the uninitiated to one of our greatest men of letters.

Share your thoughts on the The Best of Pickering ebook with other internet viewers!

Title of ebook: The Best of Pickering
ISBN: 9780472024346
parent-ISBN: 9780472113781
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Pages: 352
Published: 12-2009
Released online for download: 12-22-2009
Author of eBook: Pickering, Sam

Format

Encrypted

Sku

ISBN

File size

Security

Printing

Copying

Read aloud

Devices

Digital Editions

Yes

9780472024346

1014 KB

n/a

Not allowed

Sys Requirments

Download reader

THE BEST OF PICKERING

Introduction...................................1 Celebrity......................................13 Representative.................................27 Messing About..................................41 Near Spring....................................51 Getting It.....................................64 Magic..........................................75 Trespassing....................................94 Pedagogica Deserta.............................111 At Cambridge...................................130 Occupational Hazard............................151 From My Side of the Desk.......................154 Book Tour......................................171 Road Warrior...................................181 Split Infinitive...............................203 Selecting a Past...............................208 Composing a Life...............................223 Picked Up......................................230 Faith of the Father............................247 Son and Father.................................258 Still Life.....................................275 Patterns.......................................287 Pictures...... ... read full excerpt from: The Best of Pickering ebook

Top eBooks in "Educators"

A Personal Odyssey

by Sowell, Thomas

This is the powerful story of Thomas Sowell's life-long education in the school of hard knocks, as the journey took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a ...more

Best price: $13.97

The House Where the Hardest Things Happened

by Caley, Kate Young

Fusing an intimate memoir with an outspoken critique of organized religion's failure to welcome all into its community, The House Where the Hardest Things ...more

Best price: $11.23

Up from Slavery

by Washington, Booker T., Harlan, Louis R.

Vividly recounting Washington's life--his childhood as a slave, struggle for education, founding and presidency of the Tuskegee Institute, and meetings with the country's ...more

Best price: $4.95

Quest for Antarctica

by Barell, John F

. Antarctica fools you into thinking you are safe, that appearances are reality. Antarctica is not what she seems. Since he was thirteen years old, author ...more

Best price: $5.34

Other Biography eBooks Categories

Biography General (2228)

Personal Memoirs (1846)

Women (500)

Literary (226)

Medical (123)

Political (221)

Travelers (32)

Entertainers (409)

Military (208)

Religious (208)