Milton native Alex Pickett has written a darkly funny story of corruption set in small town Wisconsin. “The Restaurant Inspector,” University of Wisconsin Press, was released Tuesday.
Pickett wrote the book years before the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the book there is a mysterious illness pervading the town. People panic and wear masks; there’s a forced curfew that is lifted for a Packers game.
The book also includes flat earthers and Russian interference and small-scale power plays.
“It’s absurd but probably not much more absurd than Wisconsin (and most of the U.S.) has been the past few years,” Pickett said. “I finished the first draft in late summer 2016 – back then I thought I was writing a farce. Now it seems realistic.”
The Milton Courier asked Pickett, who is the son of Robert and Sara Pickett of Milton, what prompted him to write book, what he’s been up to since graduating from Milton High School in 2000 and why he’s living in London.
What prompted you to write “The Restaurant Inspector?”
”I got the idea for writing about an inspector because I was a parks inspector in New York City for a few years. I was interested in how I could essentially change people’s lives simply by doing my job.
”It didn’t seem fair that I had so much power when all I did was apply for a job to pay my rent. I wanted to push that idea as far as I could within the bounds of small town Wisconsin and show the consequences of petty people exploiting trivial amounts of power.
”That said, it’s hopefully a funny book.”
What are you doing in London?
I moved to London about four years ago (January 2017) because my wife got a job as a professor of film studies at King’s College London. At the moment she’s writing and researching and teaching, and I am writing. For the past two winters I’ve also managed a winter homeless shelter a couple days per week, and until the pandemic I worked with undocumented refugees and asylum seekers at the Red Cross – I helped teach creative writing to a men’s group there.
What else have you been up to since graduating from MHS?
After high school I went to Seattle University and dropped out after a semester. I rambled around for a while, spent some time in Oregon and California and Wisconsin where I worked at a couple factories. I moved to Alaska and supervised a warehouse in Fairbanks for about a year before going back to school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. After a year there I transferred to UW Madison where I got my BA in Creative Writing in 2005. I moved to New York City and after a short stint in nonprofit I got a job as an inspector for the Parks Department. I worked there for three years and inspected everything from hot dog carts to Tavern on the Green to Shea and Yankee stadium. I quit that job in 2009 and went back to Alaska where I volunteered for a winter in a state park near Denali. From there I hitchhiked to Milwaukee and briefly worked at a cemetery before meeting my current wife. At some point in Milwaukee, I started writing again and got into the MFA program at the University of Florida. (This novel began as my thesis at UF.) I graduated from UF in 2016. Soon after I graduated, my partner, Elena, got a job offer from King’s College London and we got married.