George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This is the first full-length scholarly study of George Bowering’s
writings, and, given the extent and range of a career that has now been
developing for 30 years, such attention is long overdue. But there are
inevitably problems related to such an endeavor. Bowering has
consistently (well, more or less consistently) regarded academic studies
with either disdain or distaste. Krцller’s well-researched and
traditional academic book may set his work on the road towards a
respectability that the author has been eager to avoid.

Krцller has established a solid reputation as a careful scholar
interested in interrelations between literature and the visual arts, and
this book is no exception. Her focus, as she announces in her
introduction, is on “Bowering’s response to contemporary Canadian
painters,” and this works well for the first half of the book, where
she compares his writing to the work of artists with whom he had come
into contact in British Columbia, in London, Ontario, and in Montreal.
This focus, however, tends to fade out in the later sections.

It is important to stress, I think, that Krцller writes more as a
scholar than as a critic. She is interested in discovering some kind of
coherent pattern in Bowering’s work, recognizing significant
developments, identifying influences and prominent attitudes. She rarely
makes any evaluative discriminations among his writings, and it is
noteworthy that, while she does describe Kerrisdale Elegies as “his
most ambitious and justly acclaimed masterpiece,” this judgment occurs
in one of the shortest chapters in the book. Those looking for helpful
exegeses of Bowering’s best-known poetry and fiction may be
disappointed. Bowering, as Krцller notes in her final chapter, is
intent upon deconstructing traditional perspectives, and is also
prepared to apply deconstructive strategies to his own life and work.
Krцller herself seems reluctant to do this, and mentions but never
confronts, for example, what some critics see as Bowering’s not
infrequent silliness. There is clearly room for a more personal, even
opinionated, critique. This is not the last word on Bowering, of course,
and it is by no means perfect, but it is certainly a useful start.