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Mordecai Richler

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Mordecai Richler
CC
Richler in the 1960s
Born(1931-01-27)January 27, 1931
Montreal,Quebec,Canada
DiedJuly 3, 2001(2001-07-03)(aged 70)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Resting placeMount Royal Cemetery
EducationBaron Byng High School
Alma materSir George Williams University
OccupationWriter
Spouses
Catherine Boudreau
​
​
(m.1954, divorced)​
Florence Isabel Mann (néeWood)
​
​
(m.1961⁠–⁠2001)​
Children

Mordecai RichlerCC(January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works areThe Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz(1959) andBarney's Version(1997). His 1970 novelSt. Urbain's Horsemanand 1989 novelSolomon Gursky Was Herewere nominated for theBooker Prize.He is also well known for theJacob Two-Twofantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about theJewish community in Canada,and aboutCanadianandQuebec nationalism.Richler'sOh Canada! Oh Quebec!(1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.

Biography[edit]

Early life and education[edit]

The son of Lily (née Rosenberg) and Moses Isaac Richler,[1]a scrap metal dealer, Richler was born on January 27, 1931, inMontreal,Quebec,[2][3]and raised onSt. Urbain Streetin that city'sMile Endarea. He was fluent in English, French andYiddish,and graduated fromBaron Byng High School.Richler enrolled inSir George Williams College(nowConcordia University) to study but did not complete his degree. Years later, Richler's mother published an autobiography,The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter(1981), which discusses Mordecai's birth and upbringing, and the sometimes difficult relationship between them. (Mordecai Richler's grandfather and Lily Richler's father wasRabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg,a celebrated rabbi in both Poland and Canada and a prolific author of many religious texts, as well as religious fiction and non-fiction works on science and history geared for religious communities.)

Richler moved to Paris at age nineteen, intent on following in the footsteps of a previous generation of literary exiles, the so-calledLost Generationof the 1920s, many of whom were from the United States.

Career[edit]

Richler returned to Montreal in 1952, working briefly at theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation,then moved to London in 1954. He published seven of his ten novels, as well as considerable journalism, while living in London.

Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montreal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Anglophone community of Montreal and especially about his former neighbourhood, portraying it in multiple novels.

Marriage and family[edit]

In England, in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met and was smitten by Florence Mann (née Wood), then married to Richler's close friend, screenwriterStanley Mann.[4]

Some years later Richler and Mann both divorced their prior spouses and married each other, and Richler adopted her sonDaniel.The couple had four other children together:Jacob,Noah,MarthaandEmma.These events inspired his novelBarney's Version.

Richler died of cancer on July 3, 2001, in Montreal, aged 70.[2][3][5]

He was also a second cousin of novelistNancy Richler.[6]

Journalism career[edit]

Throughout his career, Richler wrote journalistic commentary, and contributed toThe Atlantic Monthly,Look,The New Yorker,The American Spectator,and other magazines. In his later years, Richler was a newspaper columnist forThe National Postand Montreal'sThe Gazette.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he authored a monthly book review forGentlemen's Quarterly.

Richler was often critical ofQuebecbut ofCanadian federalismas well. Another favourite Richler target was the government-subsidizedCanadian literarymovement of the 1970s and 1980s. Journalism constituted an important part of his career, bringing him income between novels and films.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz[edit]

Richler published his fourth novel,The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,in 1959. The book featured a frequent Richler theme: Jewish life in the 1930s and 40s in the neighbourhood of Montreal east ofMount Royal Parkon and about St. Urbain Street andSaint Laurent Boulevard(known colloquially as "The Main" ). Richler wrote of the neighbourhood and its people, chronicling the hardships and disabilities they faced as a Jewish minority.

To a middle-class stranger, it is true, one street would have seemed as squalid as the next. On each corner a cigar store, a grocery, and a fruit man. Outside staircases everywhere. Winding ones, wooden ones, rusty and risky ones. Here a prized lot of grass splendidly barbered, there a spitefully weedy patch. An endless repetition of precious peeling balconies and waste lots making the occasional gap here and there.

— The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,Penguin Books, 1964, p. 13

Following the publication ofDuddy Kravitz,according toThe Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature,Richler became "one of the foremost writers of his generation".[7]

Reception[edit]

Many critics distinguished Richler the author from Richler the polemicist. Richler frequently said his goal was to be an honest witness to his time and place, and to write at least one book that would be read after his death. His work was championed by journalistsRobert FulfordandPeter Gzowski,among others. Admirers praised Richler for daring to tell uncomfortable truths;Michael Posner's oral biography of Richler is titledThe Last Honest Man(2004).

Critics cited his repeated themes, including incorporating elements of his journalism into later novels.[8]Richler's ambivalent attitude toward Montreal's Jewish community was captured inMordecai and Me(2003), a book byJoel Yanofsky.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitzhas been performed on film and in several live theatre productions in Canada and the United States.

Controversy[edit]

Main article:Delisle–Richler controversy

Richler's most frequent conflicts were with members of theQuebec nationalist movement.In articles published between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, Richler criticized Quebec's restrictive language laws and the rise ofsovereigntism.[9][10]Critics took particular exception to Richler's allegations of a long history of anti-Semitism in Quebec.[11]

Soon after thefirst electionof theParti Québécois (PQ)in 1976, Richler published "Oh Canada! Lament for a divided country" in theAtlantic Monthlyto considerable controversy. In it, he claimed the PQ had borrowed theHitler Youthsong "Tomorrow Belongs to Me"fromCabaretfor their anthem "À partir d'aujourd'hui, demain nous appartient",[12][13]though he later acknowledged his error on the song, blaming himself for having "cribbed" the information from an article byIrwin CotlerandRuth Wissepublished in the American magazine,Commentary.[14]Cotler eventually issued a written apology to Lévesque of the PQ. Richler also apologized for the incident and called it an "embarrassing gaffe".[11][15]

In 1992 Richler publishedOh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country,which parodied Quebec's language laws. He commented approvingly onEsther Delisle'sThe Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929–1939(1992), about French-Canadian anti-Semitism in the decade before the start of World War II.Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!was criticized by the Quebec sovereigntist movement and to a lesser degree by otheranglophone Canadians.[16]His detractors claimed that Richler had an outdated and stereotyped view of Quebec society, and fearmongered that he risked polarizing relations between francophone and anglophone Quebecers. SovereigntistPierrette Venne,later elected as aBloc QuébécoisMP, called for the book to be banned.[17]Daniel Latouche compared the book toMein Kampf.[18]

Nadia Khouribelieves that there was a discriminatory undertone in the reaction to Richler, noting that some of his critics characterized him as "not one of us"[19]or that he was not a "real Quebecer".[20]She found that some critics had misquoted his work; for instance, in reference to the mantra of the entwined church and state coaxing females to procreate as vastly as possible, a section in which he said that Quebec women were treated like "sows" was misinterpreted to suggest that Richler thought they were sows.[21]Québécois writers who thought critics had overreacted includedJean-Hugues Roy,Étienne Gignac,Serge-Henri Vicière,andDorval Brunelle.His defenders asserted that Mordecai Richler may have been wrong on certain specific points, but was certainly not racist nor anti-Québécois.[22]Nadia Khouri acclaimed Richler for his courage and for attacking the orthodoxies of Quebec society.[21]He has been described as "the most prominent defender of the rights of Quebec's anglophones".[23]

Some commentators were alarmed about the strong controversy over Richler's book, saying that it underlines and acknowledges the persistence of anti-Semitism among sections of the Quebec population.[24]Richler received death threats;[25]an anti-Semitic Francophone journalist yelled at one of his sons, "[I]f your father was here, I'd make him relive the Holocaust right now!" An editorial cartoon inL'actualitécompared him to Hitler.[26]One critic controversially claimed that Richler had been paid by Jewish groups to write his critical essay on Quebec. His defenders believed this was evoking old stereotypes of Jews. When leaders of the Jewish community were asked to dissociate themselves from Richler, the journalistFrances Kraftsaid that indicated that they did not consider Richler as part of the Quebec "tribe" because he was Anglo-speaking and Jewish.[27]

About the same time, Richler announced he had founded the "Impure Wool Society," to grant thePrixParizeauto a distinguished non-Francophone writer of Quebec. The group's name plays on the expressionQuébécoispure laine,typically used to refer to Quebecker with extensive French-Canadian multi-generational ancestry (or "pure wool" ). The prize (with an award of $3000) was granted twice: toBenet Davetianin 1996 forThe Seventh Circle,andDavid Manicomin 1997 forIce in Dark Water.[28]

In 2010, Montreal city councillorMarvin Rotrandpresented a 4,000-signature petition calling on the city to honour Richler on the 10th anniversary of his death with the renaming of a street, park or building in Richler's old Mile End neighbourhood. The council initially denied an honour to Richler, saying it would sacrifice the heritage of their neighbourhood.[29]In response to the controversy, the City of Montreal announced it was to renovate and rename a gazebo in his honour. For various reasons, the project stalled for several years but was completed in 2016.[30]

Representation in other media[edit]

Awards and recognition[edit]

Published works[edit]

Novels[edit]

Short story collection[edit]

Fiction for children[edit]

Jacob Two-Twoseries[34]
  • Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang(Alfred A. Knopf,1975), illustrated byFritz Wegner
  • Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur(1987)
  • Jacob Two-Two's First Spy Case(1995)

Travel[edit]

  • Images of Spain(1977)
  • This Year in Jerusalem(1994)

Essays[edit]

  • Hunting Tigers Under Glass: Essays and Reports(1968)
  • Shovelling Trouble(1972)
  • Notes on an Endangered Species and Others(1974)
  • The Great Comic Book Heroes and Other Essays(1978)
  • Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album(1984)
  • Broadsides(1991)
  • Belling the Cat(1998)
  • Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country(1992)
  • Dispatches from the Sporting Life(2002)

Nonfiction[edit]

  • OnSnooker:The Game and the Characters Who Play It(2001)

Anthologies[edit]

  • Canadian Writing Today(1970)
  • The Best of Modern Humour(1986) (U.S. title:The Best of Modern Humor)
  • Writers on World War II(1991)

Film scripts[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^"Mordecai Richler Biography".eNotes.com.RetrievedMay 15,2015.
  2. ^abDepalma, Anthony (July 4, 2001)."Mordecai Richler, Novelist Who Showed a Street-Smart Montreal, Is Dead at 70".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.RetrievedNovember 5,2021.
  3. ^abForan, Charles (March 4, 2015)."Mordecai Richler".The Canadian Encyclopedia.Historica Canada.
  4. ^Brownfeld, Allan C. (March 22, 1999)."Growing intolerance threatens humane Jewish tradition".Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.RetrievedSeptember 26,2016.
  5. ^McNay, Michael (July 5, 2001)."Mordecai Richler".The Guardian.
  6. ^"Nancy Richler novel meticulous study of Jews in postwar Montreal".Winnipeg Free Press.April 24, 2012.
  7. ^Brown, Ruseell (1997). "Richler, Mordecai". In Benson, Eugene; Toye, William (eds.).The Oxford Companion to Literature(2 ed.). Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press. p. 1000.
  8. ^"Mordecai Richler: an obituary tribute by Robert Fulford".Robertfulford.com. July 4, 2001.RetrievedAugust 20,2011.
  9. ^Steyn, Mark(September 2001). "Mordecai Richler, 1931–2001".New Criterion.20(1): 123–128.
  10. ^See the following authored by Richler:
    • "Fighting words".New York Times Book Review.Vol. 146, no. 50810. June 1, 1997. p. 8.
    • "Tired of separatism".The New York Times.Vol. 144, no. 49866. October 31, 1994. p. A19.
    • "O Quebec".The New Yorker.Vol. 70, no. 15. May 30, 1994. p. 50.
    • "On Language: Gros Mac attack".New York Times Magazine.Vol. 142, no. 49396. July 18, 1993. p. 10.
    • "Language Problems".Atlantic Monthly.Vol. 251, no. 6. June 1983. p. 10-18.
    • "OH! CANADA! Lament for a divided country".Atlantic Monthly.Vol. 240, no. 6. December 1977. p. 34.
  11. ^abConlogue, Ray (June 26, 2002)."Oh Canada, Oh Quebec, Oh Richler".The Globe and Mail.RetrievedMay 31,2018.
  12. ^Richler, Mordecai (December 1977). "OH! CANADA! Lament for a divided country".Atlantic Monthly.Vol. 240, no. 6. p. 34.
  13. ^"Video: Controverse autour du livre Oh Canada Oh Québec!".Archives.Société Radio-Canada. March 31, 1992.RetrievedSeptember 22,2006.
  14. ^Foglia, Pierre (December 16, 2000). "Faut arrêter de freaker".La Presse.
  15. ^Smith, Donald (1997).D'une nation à l'autre: des deux solitudes à la cohabitation.Montreal: Éditions Alain Stanké. p. 56.
  16. ^Smart, Pat (May 1992). "Daring to Disagree with Mordecai".Canadian Forum.p. 8.
  17. ^Johnson, William (July 7, 2001)."Oh, Mordecai. Oh, Quebec".The Globe and Mail.
  18. ^"Le Grand Silence".Le Devoir.March 28, 1992.
  19. ^Richler, Trudeau, "Lasagne et les autres", October 22, 1991.Le Devoir
  20. ^Sarah Scott, Geoff Baker, "Richler Doesn't Know Quebec, Belanger Says; Writer 'Doesn't Belong', Chairman of Panel on Quebec's Future Insists",The Gazette,September 20, 1991.
  21. ^abKhouri, Nadia.Qui a peur de Mordecai Richler.Montréal: Éditions Balzac, 1995.ISBN9782921425537
  22. ^"Hitting below the belt.", By:Barbara Amiel,Maclean's,August 13, 2001, Vol. 114, Issue 33
  23. ^Ricou, above
  24. ^Khouri, above, Scott et al., above, Delisle cited in Kraft, below
  25. ^Noah Richler, "A Just Campaign",The New York Times,October 7, 2001, p. AR4
  26. ^Michel Vastel, "Le cas Richler".L'actualité,November 1, 1996, p.66
  27. ^Frances Kraft, "Esther Delisle",The Canadian Jewish News,April 1, 1993, p. 6
  28. ^Siemens: "Canadian Literary Awards and Prizes",The Encyclopedia of Literature in CanadaArchivedFebruary 5, 2012, at theWayback Machine
  29. ^"Mordecai Richler would have enjoyed Montreal memorial controversy".Toronto Star.March 13, 2015.RetrievedMay 15,2015.
  30. ^"Mordecai Richler gazebo finally finished".CBC News.September 12, 2016.
  31. ^"Press Release: Canada's Walk of Fame Announces the 2011 Inductees".Canada's Walk of Fame. June 28, 2011. Archived fromthe originalon July 10, 2011.RetrievedJune 28,2011.
  32. ^Peritz, Ingrid (June 24, 2011)."Mordecai Richler to be honoured with gazebo on Mount Royal".The Globe and Mail.RetrievedDecember 25,2011.
  33. ^"Editorial: At last, a Richler library".Montrealgazette.com. March 12, 2015.RetrievedMay 15,2015.
  34. ^The Jacob Two-Two books are about 100 pages each. Two of them are Richler's only works inInternet Speculative Fiction Database(ISFDB), which catalogues them as juvenile fantasy novels and reports multiple cover artists and interior illustrators.
    "Mordecai Richler – Summary Bibliography".ISFDB. Retrieved July 25, 2015.
  35. ^"The Street".National Film Board of Canada.RetrievedAugust 21,2012.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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