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The Blue
Caterpillar and Other Essays
by Sam Pickering
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this Book now
From "The
Blue Caterpillar":
"Sixty-seven girls and one adult danced in Alice.
Eliza was the Queen of Hearts, and I was the Blue Caterpillar. I
was excited. Never had I been in a ballet. Fifty-two years is a
long time to be a chrysalis, and I was eager to split the pupal
shell, pump up my wings, and flutter through an auditorium."
From a review of Trespassing :
"Reading Pickering . . . is like taking a walk with your
oldest, wittiest friend."—Smithsonian
Movie-goers know him as the inspiration for the lead role in Dead
Poets’ Society (as played by Robin Williams), but
thousands of devoted readers also know Sam Pickering for the wit,
keen insight, and lively prose style exhibited here and in seven
previous volumes of familiar essays.
In the title piece, Pickering is the Blue Caterpillar, a role he
is asked to play in his daughter’s elementary school
production of Alice in Wonderland, a role which strikes
Pickering--and will strike his readers--as wonderfully
appropriate. Funny and moving, these essays seem born of the
murky inkling a caterpillar must have that things are changing;
it is to the changes, especially the small ones, that Pickering
attends.
Language changes, ideas of family change, Republicans change, the
South changes. In "There Have Been Changes," Pickering
remarks that "domestic change is cyclical and wifely."
In other essays his two sons suddenly seem distant, and his
daughter acquires a new talent at summer camp: "becoming the
best mooner in the cabin." Pets--tadpoles and salamanders,
dogs, hamsters, kittens, and a baby squirrel--join and take their
leave of the Pickering household. In "Down" his wife
decides (very much against his wishes) to pierce her ears.
Fifteen hundred miles away, an uncle grows old and needs caretaking. Pickering himself grows older. And of course, the
seasons change.
Pickering’s chrysalis harbors a true naturalist. Seeing and
describing the world around him as if for the first time, he
watches for "emblems of a decent life, a slow life in which
little things matter: pets, wildflowers beneath mountain ridges,
friends in wheelchairs, family and community, those soft, dancing
dodos and bumblebees over whom everybody should watch, and watch
carefully." Pickering watches carefully, writes engagingly,
and in the process teaches us that the world is always new.
Sam Pickering is the author of seven books of
essays, including Still Life, Let it Ride, Walkabout Year,
and Trespassing. Born and raised in Nashville,
Tennessee, educated at Sewanee, Cambridge, and Princeton,
Pickering teaches literature at the University of Connecticut in
Storrs.
1997. 229 pp. 6 X 9.
ISBN 0-8130-1482-4
Cloth, $29.95
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"The essays in this deceptively slim volume seem to come from those primeval instincts in Sam Pickering's archetypal memory that relate to the natural world, and from those unfounded fears that his tenuous grasp of civilization is beginning to slip - hence the modus operandi for humor in this delightful collection which takes the reader from a June to a June in a most decidedly non-linear fashion."--The Southern Quarterly
"Each of these pieces begins with a small, highly personal
observation, and from there Pickering (often quite literally)
‘takes a walk’ . . . exploring the natural world, the
world of family and friends, and--most vividly--the world of
ideas. Always, of course, that Pickering voice is at the center .
. . witty, self-deprecating, funny, clear-eyed, no nonsense, and
distinctly his."--Jay Parini, Middlebury College
"Readers will finish Pickering’s book. They will do so
in a sitting."--Richard Brantley, University of Florida
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