George BoweringReseñas

An amazing book. This book is based on the true story of the McLean Gang -- three Metis brothers and their friend Alex Hare -- in the late 1800s. It paints a picture of life in the Canadian west, including the arrival of the Hudson's Bay Company, colonization, identity (as "half-breeds" the McLean Gang had challenges fitting into both the settler and the Indian communities), morality and so much more. It is beautifully written, if you stick with it. The book is a blend of stories and legends and jumps around a lot, but as the narrative becomes clear, you are rewarded with an amazing story that will make you think about our history.

Very enjoyable, assumes a bit of knowledge about the subjects it touches upon but nevertheless provides good situating of various historical events that are otherwise often taken as set pieces.

THE HOCKEY SCRIBBLER is the fourth George Bowering book I've read. I first 'discovered' this Canadian writer's work about four years ago, when another Canadian writer, Elizabeth Hay, suggested I would probably like his then-new memoir, PINBOY. She was wrong. I didn't just like it; I LOVED it! Since then I've read a couple other 'sorta' memoirs by Bowering: BASEBALL LOVE and A MAGPIE LIFE: GROWING A WRITER, and thoroughly enjoyed both of those books too. (Bowering, by the way, is a former Canadian Poet Laureate and has, in his long and illustrious career, published more than a hundred books.)

In THE HOCKEY SCRIBBLER Bowering does for hockey what he did for baseball in BASEBALL LOVE, although he admits his passion for hockey has never quite equalled his love of baseball. (Bowering played softball well into his seventies; I'm not sure if, at 80, he's still at it.) But since hockey is more the national pastime in Canada than baseball, he could not have avoided it, even as a kid in the sandy country around Oliver, BC (which is almost but not quite in the U.S.). He tells us early and often about listening to Foster Hewitt and "Hockey Night in Canada" on the radio in the late 1940s as he sprawled on the rug doing his math homework. He proudly wore "an itchy blue Maple Leafs sweater." And during that period Bowering also "bought a scribbler and got some glue somewhere and started a scrapbook of NHL clippings." That "scribbler" scrapbook, which Bowering carted around with him over the next several decades, along with other precious detritus of a life littered with sports and books - things like the first issues of Blueline and Hockey Pictorial magazines - was the inspiration for this book.

Here's the thing. I don't really know squat about hockey. Don't watch it, don't follow it. But because Bowering is such a funny, self-deprecating and talented writer, I still enjoyed the hell outa this book. I liked his humor, all the bits of memoir sandwiched in here, about his time in the RCAF as a photographer, for example. Or the fact that the Leafs' Gary Unger was popular with gay men, who "would make stupendous claims for the ardour with which they pined for the playmaker with the streaming blond hair."

And, besides the hockey stories, Bowering also talks about his writer friends, like Brian Fawcett (author of the 2013 hockey novel, THE LAST OF THE LUMBERMEN), and a road trip they made to promote an earlier Fawcett book called MY CAREER WITH THE LEAFS AND OTHER STORIES. Driving into Montreal they ogled the girls in their spring dresses, with Fawcett, who was driving, his head swiveling dangerously, saying, "Look at that! Oh look at that!" It made me laugh, and brought back my own spring vacation trip to Fort Lauderdale nearly fifty years ago.

Bowering also talks of his gradual disillusionment with the direction hockey took in the early 70s, initially with the Philadelphia Flyers "Broad Street Bullies" goon squad, resulting in "arousing performable hatred in the bosoms of paying customers all over the league." And he devotes much of one chapter, "Whack 'Em, Smack 'Em," to the ultra-violent and unscrupulous former player and coach, Don Cherry.

Bowering also gets into team names, league expansion, and where certain teams originated, then moved elsewhere and so on. Case in point, the Calgary Flames, who started out in Atlanta, their name "commemorated the great Civil War burning of Atlanta. Their logo was a capital A in flames." When they moved to Calgary, the A was changed to a C. A writer friend of Bowering suggested "they should have kept the original letter and called the Calgary team the 'Flaming A's'."

I could go on about the stuff I liked most about THE HOCKEY SCRIBBLER, but I hope you get the idea. Bowering is a very funny guy and he kept me grinning, chortling and guffawing through much of the book. But this is, after all, a book about hockey, and its importance in Canada, and to hockey fans everywhere. And it is chuck full of names, stats, and hockey stories that the real hockey afficianados will devour. Different strokes, and all that. For my own reasons, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Thanks for digging out that old scrapbook and sharing your life and memories yet again, George. Very highly recommended, for hockey fans, and for fans of good writing. (four and a half stars, but others will give it a five-plus, I'm sure.)

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER½

Shoot! started out as a slow and very confusing read for me. Bowering weaves historical fact with native legend and his own unique story-telling. The first 100 pages of the story was a bit of a challenge to piece together, bouncing around like a pinball ricocheting around in a pinball machine. Flipping narratives and timelines every page or so can get a bit unnerving for any reader, I think. Thankfully, Bowering finally settles into his story and calms down the narrative flipping to a more manageable level, allowing me to finally sit back and get drawn in. Bowering, Canada's first Poet Laureate, captures the dead cold of that 1879 interior BC winter with a practiced hand, communicating its terrifying raw, elemental beauty. In Shoot!, Bowering strips bare and exposes to the light of day the stories that have been relegated to the 'dusty basement' of BC's recorded historical past. While this story is on its surface a story about a gang of outlaws, the posse who tracked them down and the English justice that they they faced in New Westminster, it has a dark underbelly that I believe to be the thrust of Bowering's story. As mentioned by Sherrill Grace in her afterword to the story:

"Shoot! is a story about the HBC (Hudson Bay Company), its white businessmen, their Indian country wives, and their mixed-race children who would not be fully accepted by either white or native communities. These children were especially feared by those white colonizers who wanted to make fortunes and create a civilized English-speaking society of law, order and status out of a wild, rich, as yet unexploited land, and who definitely wanted to deny their past sexual alliances."

Unlike a number of the famous outlaw gangs of the American Wild West that I have read about, the McLean Gang, outside of Allan, were still mere boys. Allan, the oldest, was 25. Charlie and Alex Hare were 17 and young Archie was 15. Their rampage was fueled in part by the way they were treated as 'breeds'. For the McLeans, their suffering started at the hand of their violent father, a Hudson Bay Company Chief Factor and grew into one of community-wide disgust, disdain and indifference after their father's death in 1864 at the hand of a Chilcotin warrior when the family's Hat Creek ranch was taken away from their Native Indian mother by the white settlers, leaving the family destitute. For all members of the McLean Gang, their anger was also fueled by the fact that one of Kamloops richest white settlers, Mara, was having his way with the McLean brothers' young sister, Annie. Bowering's story hit a resounding nerve within me as a reminder of Canada's settlement past and how important it is for stories that are a legacy of Canada's past to be communicated and shared. At their trial in New Westminster, Judge Henry Pering Pellew Crease makes a statement that, as Bowering has written, may explain why the McLean Gang and their rampage are not widely captured in the recent written histories of the province: "You have caused great terror throughout the country, and by a campaign of robbery and assault and murder you have disgraced British Columbia." They do always say that history is written by the winners/victors. I believe that Bowering has brilliantly captured in his story the very fact that everyone has a story and it is all of the stories, not just the stories of the victors, that need to be heard and shared.

I can recommend this story to anyone who has an interest in outlaw gangs of the 19th century North American west. For me as a Canadian and a British Columbian, this story has extra meaning and really resonated with me. It has also left me with a lot to think about.½

This is a very impressionist tale, mostly a stringing together of poetic selections relating to the history of George Vancouver's expedition to the Pacific Northwest. The two Indians, rather like Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe, pass wry comments on the episode. It's not Bowering's best work.½

This is my third George Bowering book read in the last couple of months, all three of them memoirs or "sort of" memoirs. The author's love of baseball has been well-documented in all three books. The odd thing was that it seems he didn't really 'dare' to play baseball regularly until he was a young man. As a kid he lacked the confidence, felt gawky and uncoordinated, too tall, etc. I can relate, since I didn't stop growing until I was about 20, topping out at 6'5". And yeah, when you're still growing, grace and coordination are not established, that's for sure.

The basic premise of BASEBALL LOVE is a transcontinental automobile trip Bowering makes across Canada and the USA with his then-fiancee (now wife), Jean Baird, visiting various ball parks, some major, but mostly minor league venues. His commentary on players, people observed and met, books about baseball, various Canadian amateur leagues he played in from his twenties all the way up into his sixties (the Kosmic League, the Twilight League) never fails to entertain, and often makes you chuckle and sometimes laugh out loud (which annoyed my wife). Bowering's wry, dry and irreverent sense of humor seems to be a trademark of all his writing, or at least in the three books I've so far read - this one and PINBOY and A MAGPIE LIFE. In fact there are plenty of guffaw-ish funny lines in here, but perhaps one of the best was attributed to his daughter, Thea, when she commented on her dad's legs one of the last times he played ball wearing shorts. She said: "Are those your legs, or are you riding a chicken?" I damn near fell outa my chair laughing. In empathy though, GB. I have pretty ugly old man skinny legs myself.

Bowering is always funny, and ever the curmudgeon. I didn't always agree with George's gripes, but everyone - especially old guys set in their ways - likes what he likes. He likes Bouton's BALL FOUR, Bill Lee's THE WRONG STUFF, Jerome Charyn's THE SEVENTH BABE and Jim Piersall's story, FEAR STRIKES OUT, Philip Roth's THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL and others (I took notes). Bowering doesn't like Malamud's (he calls him, derisively, 'Malamute') novel THE NATURAL - or its movie adaptation. I kinda liked 'em both, but the book more than the film. He doesn't seem to like Mark Harris's baseball tetralogy (beginning with THE SOUTHPAW). I loved all four books, and enjoyed the film version of BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY too. But I do agree that a lot of early baseball movies were really crap. And I also find it sad that so many of the major leage stadiums (and minor too) are now named for major corporations or finance companies. My own Detroit Tigers now play in Comerica Park, named for a bank. And one of their farm teams in Grand Rapids, the West Michigan Whitecaps play in Fifth Third Park - another bank. In fact I learned that Fifth Third owns minor leage parks in a couple other states too. Sad.

But how I do go on. Point is I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am nowhere near as rabid a baseball fan as George Bowering. You don't need to be a ball fan, in fact, to enjoy BASEBALL LOVE. You just have to like good writing. You'll find it here. Enjoy.

I recently read and reviewed my first George Bowering book, PINBOY. Bottom line? LOVED it! Waxed enthusiastic over it, needless to say. Bowering is a poet and writer of some renown in Canada, and probably particularly in his home province of British Columbia. I am a Michigan boy and several years younger than Bowering, but I had no trouble at all relating to his childhood and coming-of-age years, as well as his young adult life and, now, coming to terms with the fact that we can't really call ourselves 'middle-aged' anymore. All that stuff is evident in PINBOY. And it's all there again in this earlier (2001) book, A MAGPIE LIFE: GROWING A WRITER.

Probably the best part of this book, hands down, is the initial section, a forty-page mini-memoir called "Alphabiography." It begins with a short tribute - "A" - to his late wife, Angela Luoma Bowering. The two were married from 1962 until her death in 1999. "B" is birth - GB's own. "C" is childhood. "D" is death. "E" is Ewart Bowering, George's father, a HS Chemistry teacher in Oliver, BC, where GB grew up. And so on. "K" is for Kerouac, but could just as easily been another Canadian writer, Robert Kroetsch, frequently mentioned in the book. "L" is of course for Literature. Because Bowering has been an addicted reader his whole life. Enamored as a boy by pulp western writers like Max Brand and Luke Short, he progressed to Heinlein and Bradbury. More recently he has been reading "Nathalie Saraute and Adolfo Bioy Casares. [I confess I don't know either of these.] First I read books, and as I got older I read literature."

As a fellow booklover who has read himself nearly blind over the years, I could relate. Although Bowering has written scores of books, he supported himself mostly by teaching at various universities in Canada, finally settling in at Simon Fraser University, where he stayed for nearly thirty years, until his retirement. Even about this, his profession, he refuses to take himself seriously, saying he taught "creative writhing." I suspect he sides with many other writers who feel creative writing is not something that can be taught.

Besides being a creative 'writher," Bowering is also an historian, and some of the essays about British Columbia history are simply fascinating, although even there GB's deadpan humor is in evidence. And there are essays here too about another lifelong passion, baseball.

There are thirty-three essays in A MAGPIE LIFE, and there is not a clinker in the bunch. Every one of them is informative, entertaining, and often hilariously funny. If there was anything about the book I did not like, it was that it was occasionally redundant, the same information and anecdotes often showing up in different pieces. But most of these articles had been previously published in various periodicals over the years, which explains this redundancy. But Bowering knows his poets, his literature, and his country, and I greatly enjoyed reading all of A MAGPIE LIFE. I will undoubtedly look for more of his books. Highly recommended, particularly for USAmericans (as Bowering calls us down here) who are trying to learn more about Canadian literature. George Bowering's memories from the last fifty years would be an excellent starting point. (N.B. Bowering confesses to liking "neat" things. I think it's kinda neat the way he uses no apostrophes in his contractions. Worked fine for me.)

(Now I gotta go look up Robert Kroetsch - and a few other writers often praised here.)½

George Bowering's newest book, a memoir called PINBOY, is an absolute hoot. I loved it!

Bowering, who has written literally scores of books - poetry, plays, essays, fiction, etc. - was once Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate and has received numerous honors for his work over a career that spans more than fifty years. And yet, prior to reading this book, I had never heard of him. PINBOY was recommended to me by another Canadian writer whose work I greatly admire, Elizabeth Hay. She apparently enjoyed the book nearly as much as I did, which I could be surprised at, since, besides being a hilariously funny book, PINBOY is also perhaps one of the "dirtiest" books I have read in years. And I put that in quotes because I'm not sure "dirty" really adequately describes Bowering's brutally candid, deliciously ribald, yet also sometimes very sensitive look at what it was like to be fifteen years old, in love with the idea of being in love, and horny as hell in the early 1950s in a small town in southern British Columbia. Whew! That was a real run-on mouthful, huh?

But yeah, it really is pretty dirty, come to think of it. Why else would I have enjoyed it so much? Lotsa sex in there. And not just the "solitary pleasures" most fifteen year-old boys are most familiar with (and young George was no different), but a few other variations too, mostly involving his actual girl friend, Wendy Love(above the waist privileges), and an unscrupulous sexually rapacious teacher, Miss Monica Verge, the high school Home Economics and Business teacher who was at least twice the age of our hero. This latter 'relationship' was a source of great wonderment, fear and trembling to Bowering, although certainly not unwelcome.

Bowering himself calls PINBOY his attempt "to tell about a moment in my adolescence ... when I was trying to live an ordinary kid's life while trying to keep four female human beings happy." The other two females were his mother (who understood her son all too well), and a rather mysterious and obviously poor girl from the other side of the tracks named Jeanette MacArthur. His attempts to break through the tough shell of isolation and independence of this latter female make up some of the best, most sensitive, parts of his story.

But PINBOY is not all about sexual awakening. There's plenty of that 'ordinary kid' stuff in there too, although Bowering was never, I suspect, really 'ordinary.' He loved books, something that set him apart from many of his peers. Like me, George always packed a book wherever he went. And he tells us about what he's reading too. That year it was mostly westerns (Max Brand, Luke Short, Wayne D. Overholser, Ernest Haycox, etc.), although he began sampling other kinds of stuff that year too - Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, James M. Cain, Erskine Caldwell and George Orwell. George also worked. He had a partime job setting pins in the local bowling alley (hence the title) and also toiled in the local fruit orchards, pruning, thinning, picking, etc. He kept up with all the latest popular music. He had a few close friends in Will Trump, Joe Makse and John Jalovec, and liked to hang out with them around town (particularly the pool hall), speculating and telling lies about about girls and women, smoking and drinking, horsing around and hiking in the nearby countryside. Bowering talks about the importance of looking and dressing well - the greased back 'boogie cut' hair fashion of the times, and the 'drape' pegged trousers and often homemade shirts. The agonies of having almost-but-not-quite-right fashions. In other words, all the usual angst that goes with being a teenager.

Bowering was also an avid baseball and sports fan and worked as a sports reporter for the local newspaper, wearing a funky old fedora with a homemade 'Press' card tucked rakishly in the hatband. His love affair with baseball was one that would last his whole life.

There are so many things I want to say about this truly excellent coming-of-age memoir that I just can't seem to get it all straight in my head, so I'm gonna just give you a few samples here.

On religious differences -

"... the kids in a small town will eventually hear about the strictest rules laid down by someone else's preachers. The Jehovah's Witness kids were not supposed to read any books except the Bible. The Lutheran kids were not supposed to listen to the hit parade. The Holy Roller girls could not use lipstick. The Catholic kids could commit sins all they wanted to, because all they had to do was confess them to the priest and start all over again, clean as a whistle."

On comic books -

"After some US popular psychologist claimed that comic books wer turning kids into criminals, parents all over the place tried to keep them out of our hands. Nowadays, when teenagers carry cocaine in one pocket and a cell phone you can download fellatio movies from in the other, comic books don't seem so scary."

On books and reading -

"My extra-curricular reading went along with my loneness, as it still does. It contributed to it, I think. Sometimes it pissed people off ... I think they might have been smart enough to think that my reading was somehow a criticism of their lives devoid of reading. But I just liked it. It gave me two lives running at the same time. Why would anyone turn that down?"

On boys and early driving experiences -

"Boys driving tractors are really adolescents acquiring a high regard for their own sexual likelihood. I faintly sensed that when I sat up on the seat of that little grey Ford tractor, with the compression snout out front of my crotch. It is part of nature's plan that teenaged lads should roar around fruit groves on loud motorized phalluses, covered with sweat and striped with grime."

And on and on. The thing is, Bowering is a guy who is completely comfortable in his own skin as a writer. Enough so that he's not afraid to poke fun at himself. Here's what he said about his own poetry, much of which has been published in small unknown magazines or by obscure presses -

"I know that guys almost my age have eaten Velveeta sandwiches so they can get my chapbooks of acerbic verses into the hands of the forty people who want to read them while sitting and waiting for the prune juice to work."

I mean this Bowering guy is just plain flat-out FUNNY. He writes like Ring Lardner unleashed from the strictures of censorship. I laughed out loud, I chuckled, I chortled. And I often cringed in recognition. This is writing - GOOD writing - about the universal experience of growing up, of turning from a boy into a man. More than once here Bowering refers to his current self as an old "gink." Me, I'm an old "geezer." I suspect they mean pretty much the same thing, because I can relate. PINBOY is simply one hell of a good read. And not just for ginks and geezers, but for anyone who loves good writing. Bravo, Bowering. Write on!

This is not the most thrilling lit criticism/writing I have ever read, and Bowering's writing does tend to get bogged down in fancy terms I don't know or care about, but this is an enjoyable collection for the glimpses into Vancouver's poetry scene in the 1960's, for the glimpses into Bowering's life, and for the several gems of sentences that now sit above my desk as inspiration.

George is fricken cool because he doesn't write biographies, he writes biotexts, alphabiographies. So neat to see someone from the Okanagan inspire the world in such a way.