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Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia
"Reading Pickering," said Smithsonian, "is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend." In Walkabout Year, Samuel Pickering, the professor who inspired the movie Dead Poets Society, provides an intimate, engaging chronicle of his family's year in Western Australia. The reader is pulled into Pickering's tight family circle and off on an intriguing trip to another land.
With humor, skill, and insight, Pickering describes the educational system his three children experienced; the family's journeys from one area of the country to another as he lectured; and the people—both academics and nonacademics—he encountered. He compares the flora, fauna, and economics to those in America, and reveals much else about daily life in a new country. As a result, Walkabout Year is part travelogue, part reflection on the differences between two cultures, and part autobiography. As Smithsonian stated, "Pickering has created his own comfortable world, and it is always a pleasure to slip into his company for a time." Readers will feel a strong bond with the family and as if they too have been thoroughly exposed to the intriguing world of Australia.
With humor, skill, and insight, Pickering describes the educational system his three children experienced; the family's journeys from one area of the country to another as he lectured; and the people—both academics and nonacademics—he encountered. He compares the flora, fauna, and economics to those in America, and reveals much else about daily life in a new country. As a result, Walkabout Year is part travelogue, part reflection on the differences between two cultures, and part autobiography. As Smithsonian stated, "Pickering has created his own comfortable world, and it is always a pleasure to slip into his company for a time." Readers will feel a strong bond with the family and as if they too have been thoroughly exposed to the intriguing world of Australia.
344 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1995
12 people want to read
About the author
Samuel F. Pickering Jr.
36 books9 followersSam Pickering is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Conneticut.
Samuel F. Pickering Jr. (also known as Sam) was born in Nashville, attended Montgomery Bell Academy and the University of the South, and took advanced degrees at Cambridge and Princeton on his way to becoming a scholar of children's literature. In addition to scholarly books and articles, his writing life has been built on the familiar essay, where his wit, crusty affability, and sense of wonder often tinged with mischief shine through what he calls "forthright, workaday sentences." His topics range from wildflowers in Nova Scotia to small town gossip in Tennessee to the fusty pretensions of university life. As exercises in "gilding the mundane," Pickering's essays discover subtle ironies, juxtapose delight and melancholy, and wander afield but always return home.
Pickering's allegiance is always to the essays themselves, which are often based in fact but are not slaves to it. In "Composing a Life" from his first collection, A Continuing Education (1985), he writes, "The trouble is that I'm not sure if the things I remember actually happened." His blend of the madcap and mundane, as he says in another piece, can "thrust him against the actual." Pickering sees truth as composite, to be picked apart by language. His books include May Days (1987), Still Life (1990), and Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia (1995). His life, he says, is like his writing: "slow, relaxed, punctuated by fits of pique and occasionally lust, but all in all meandering and gently contemplative."
Samuel F. Pickering Jr. (also known as Sam) was born in Nashville, attended Montgomery Bell Academy and the University of the South, and took advanced degrees at Cambridge and Princeton on his way to becoming a scholar of children's literature. In addition to scholarly books and articles, his writing life has been built on the familiar essay, where his wit, crusty affability, and sense of wonder often tinged with mischief shine through what he calls "forthright, workaday sentences." His topics range from wildflowers in Nova Scotia to small town gossip in Tennessee to the fusty pretensions of university life. As exercises in "gilding the mundane," Pickering's essays discover subtle ironies, juxtapose delight and melancholy, and wander afield but always return home.
Pickering's allegiance is always to the essays themselves, which are often based in fact but are not slaves to it. In "Composing a Life" from his first collection, A Continuing Education (1985), he writes, "The trouble is that I'm not sure if the things I remember actually happened." His blend of the madcap and mundane, as he says in another piece, can "thrust him against the actual." Pickering sees truth as composite, to be picked apart by language. His books include May Days (1987), Still Life (1990), and Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia (1995). His life, he says, is like his writing: "slow, relaxed, punctuated by fits of pique and occasionally lust, but all in all meandering and gently contemplative."
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