With an introduction by Lisa Robertson

"There is no there there" Gertrude Stein's famous phrase about the Oakland she grew up in, applies to the Oliver, BC of George Bowering's youth. What is to be found there, as Stein demonstrated, are objects, and rooms, and food.

George Bowering's newest book delights in the thing-iness of memory. Understanding himself as an object among objects, Bowering conjures up the sights, tastes, and touches of a world otherwise beyond our grasp. Stein, Charles Olson, Roland Barthes: these are the masters shaping this tender picture of a childhood in the South Okanagan, and a lifetime of writing.