Scotland, Step by Step
Sam Pickering’s new essay collection is inspired by Edinburgh’s minutiae
by Chris Scott
The combination of exotic locale and talented writer generates many delightful passages, including Pickering’s description of Scotland’s winds, which, he says, “carom around stone buildings, breaking quatrains, and pushing people about, turning walks into free verse and broken lines.” Encountering a portrait of George III, he observes that the king “lounged across a chair, his red coat the blouse of a circus clown and his oval face moronic, looking like a loaf of bread from which the crust had been peeled.” In such prose it’s apparent that the aging Pickering hasn’t lost the youthful irreverence that inspired the Robin Williams character in Dead Poets Society. But there are portions of Edinburgh Days where the introspection and impertinence wear a little thin, and Pickering comes across as more bitter and short-tempered than charmingly irreverent. For that reason, the essays inspired by his daughter’s springtime visit arrive as a fresh breeze, sweeping away the self-inspection and revealing a man still capable of outward thought. And perhaps that is Pickering’s point: travel cleanses the self, with new experiences breaking the hold of the comfortable, letting us see the world afresh.
