cover image Let It Ride

Let It Ride

Samuel F. Pickering. University of Missouri Press, $24.95 (177pp) ISBN 978-0-8262-0801-9

Pickering is the teacher who inspired the film Dead Poets Society. In this collection of essays that track his experiences in the months following the release of the film, he explores the humorous aspects of unexpected celebrity and the changes it brought. Whether at home in Connecticut or at his vacation retreat in Nova Scotia, he kept close to nature, finding comfort in brushing his hands across oak trees, rambling in the night woods or simply ``thinking how lucky I was to be teaching English at the University of Connecticut.'' The quotidian details of his roles as husband and father, as well as caretaker of a dying parent, mingle with a relatedness to nature, so that the 12 essays constitute a warm and realistic appreciation of what Pickering calls ``the clutter of life.'' (Oct.)