Life as a constant essayist
Sam Pickering, on the English faculty at the University of Connecticut, was the model for Robin Williams’s character in the sentimental hit movie Dead Poets Society and is the author of eighteen books, fifteen of them lighthearted essay collections describing his “doings.” Sometimes he alternates with humorous stories about fictionalized characters from his Tennessee hometown. He publishes mostly with university presses—everyone gets a turn: when I was at Ohio University Press we published Deprived of Unhappiness, his tenth volume of …