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Mordecai and Me: An Appreciation of a Kind

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Books on Mordecai Richler have been, and will be, done. Few, if any, will meet the standard set by this excellent study of Canada's greatest writer. A mainstream biography would likely fuss over whether the child Mordecai was disappointed in the gifts received on his fifth birthday. Others, deeming themselves profound, would delve into hidden, likely unconscious and more likely apocryphal, layers of the person's subconscious. Yanofsky, emulating his subject's ambition to remain "an honest witness", presents his own, lively and valid account of Richler's life as a writer. Given Richler's power of language this is no small enterprise. Yanofsky is even plagued by dreams of his subject, waking his wife in the middle of the night to discuss them. From the beginning, this is an engaging account, keeping the reader captive to the final page.

Yanofsky's subtitle says much about this book. As a young man, Richler had strong ambitions to be a noted writer. Yet what he wrote managed to offend nearly everybody. They were his relatives and his neighbours after all. In the post-Holocaust era, portraying Jews as anything less than heroic was viewed as hostile. Richler didn't target his peers, he merely portrayed them. He found stories in unlikely places and circumstances. And there were different stories everywhere he looked - "no two flats have the same history" - expresses how he saw St Urbain. He respected individuals even as he depicted them realistically. However, as he discovered, few enjoy being stripped naked in public. Yanofsky admits that Richler himself "would likely hate" this book. It isn't wholly adulatory, and treats Richler as he treated St Urbain's residents - clearly and factually.

The underlying theme is Richler's expression of his Jewish roots. Writing in the years after the European Holocaust, he moved readily into the growing realm of North American "Jewish writers". If Yanofsky fails at all in this book, it is here. Not just because Richler eschewed much of his Jewishness, but because he became the foremost voice in relating the life of his neighbourhood - "this is what it's like, where I live". Richler's aim was to explain to the world in a raw, intense, but non-accusatory way, the Jewish community's life. That community, nearly as cohesive, could be found in many urban centres in North America. Many, mostly young men, struggled to escape - Duddy Kravitz the archetypal example. In another part of the city it might be a Dominic or Dimitrious. Richler's focus on his community keeps Yanofsky rightly constrained. Yet Richler's audience was far wider than merely his contemporaries - and remains so. Regrettably, Yanofsky relates that "Richler studies" are fading. If that's so, his book should do much to revive them. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]