Pinboy

the long version

"In George Bowering's entertaining memoir, growing up at the mid-point of the twentieth century in the orchard country of BC's interior is not composed of long stretches of summer spent picking peaches and swimming. His adolescence was marked by the dangers of clearing pins in the local bowling alley, the obstacles encountered in wanting to date and protect a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, a high school teacher's extra-curricular lessons, and a growing awareness of the wider world as made evident by the broadcasts of professional baseball games. Bowering's youth provides signs of the writer he grew up to be. As a teenager he was already being paid fifteen cents a column inch for the baseball and basketball stories he filed with the local paper. Later, he wrote poems for the objects of his affection. It is here Bowering's memoir sings. As he begins to understand the women in his life and his attraction to them, his writing describes beautifully the comedy, complications, and confusions that attend this period in a boy's life."--Book jacket.