By Joe Mackall
We’ve been on a bit of a lucky streak here at River Teeth. Being who we are of course means that we don’t measure our luck by grants received or prizes won—although we have received grants and won our share of prizes. No, we’re hopelessly old-fashioned about good fortune. For us it nearly always involves connecting with family and friends, readers and writers. We’re fortunate—perhaps even blessed—because of the writers we’ve been able to publish. In our last issue, we featured work by Phillip Lopate, one of our favorite writers and friends. We’ve scored big again this issue with two essays (“The End of Term” and “Winter Dreams”) by Sam Pickering and an interview with Sam conducted by Mel Livatino. When it comes to Sam we’ve been doubly blessed. His essay “Dog Days,” which was published in an earlier issue of River Teeth, appeared in Robert Atwan’s Best American Essays 2005.
I’ve admired Sam’s work for years and I’ve admired Sam the man as well as Sam the writer. He considers himself a happy man. He looks for the beauty in life and sees it everywhere. As he tells Mel Livatino, “I want to enjoy this life, the only life I’ll have, and writing helps me live.” Sam’s writing helps me live.
Perhaps because Sam is a glass overflowing kind of guy, and I’m a glass is shattered and flecks of my flesh are bloodied and hanging on shattered shards kind of guy, I find myself envying him his vision. According to Sam, essay writing is “…observing and thinking, and I hope enjoying life.” I have to admit that I sometimes feel guilty reading Sam’s essays. He does sound happy. He does seem to possess the secret of a happy life, a secret that despite loving family, a conflicted faith and worthwhile work, eludes me on more mornings than I care to admit. I also envy Sam because his work seems indistinguishable from his life. Although I’ve never met her, I feel as though I know his wife Vicki, and imagine that Sam, Vicki, my wife Dandi and I would become fast friends, if we ever met. When I want to read about happy marriages in fiction, I generally read the great Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. In nonfiction I seek out just about anything by Sam Pickering.
Sam’s children also show up in his work, as do dogs, flowers, students; anything that is life seems to find its way into Sam’s work. As he says, “What I see and hear, what I stumble across and what stumbles across me, are what I write about.” Thank God for that.
As ebullient as Sam appears, I suspect there’s a light sheen of melancholy that shimmers beneath the surface. In his essay “Winter Dreams” he writes about certain feelings just before a recent Christmas. “Moreover, Vicki is not as cheery as she once was. Like everyone’s offspring, our children have grown apart from us. The sweet, gentle intimacy of childhood Christmases has vanished.”
But Sam Pickering won’t leave himself or his readers mired in melancholy, because, too him, I suspect, even mild melancholia around Christmas is evidence of life’s beauty. At one point in an essay, Sam writes about watching snakes writhe through his fingers and how they “…[make] the world seem wondrous.” And that’s what I say about the work of Sam Pickering.
Thanks for reading.
