Samuel F. Pickering Jr.
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Samuel F. Pickering is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
An author of many collections of non-fiction personal essays and over 200 published articles, Pickering's unconventional teaching style was the inspiration for the character of Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society.
Sam Pickering specializes in the essay, children's writing and nature writers.
He received his BA from University of the South, his second BA and MA from St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and his second MA and PhD from Princeton University. His employment history includes assistant professor at Dartmouth College 1970-1978, associate professor at the University of Connecticut 1978-1984, and professor at UConn 1984 to present. His [current cv]is available at the UConn English Department web site.
Critique Magazine's web site has archived some interviews with Pickering, ["A Visit with Pickering"]and ["On Writing"].
An excerpt from Pickering "On Writing":
- :...I tie all kinds of things together because I like to drift. That’s the way life is. Some folks don’t like that.
- :Often, I just write about—I mean, Scott Sanders came here—he’s a nice man—he gave a talk on one of his books. He talked about all the tools he could use in the books. So, I wrote an essay called “Tool Less” because I can’t use any tools. [laughs] So I wrote about that and I proved that the people who couldn’t use tools were more flexible. They were very nice people . People who used tools thought that things could be made and fashioned to last. People who didn’t use tools knew that nothing lasts so they were not zealots of any kind. He thought I was a complete savage and a fascists at that. [laughs] So, that was the occasion for that.
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